a Real bad week
May 11, 2009 by f4denz.
You have to consider last week to be a bad week for Real Salt Lake, coming off a horrible showing in Colorado, everyone expected a midweek win over LA but rather the match ended in perhaps the strangest final 5 minutes of any match I have seen, and then top it off by the 4th consecutive road loss on Saturday. So what happened and how bad was it really?
RSL 2 - LA 2
For 75 minutes RSL simply outplayed LA on Wednesday night, dominated possession and it showed despite picking up just the one Findley goal RSL had taken 9 shots to LA’s 5 but in the final 15 minutes RSL only got one shot other than their PK off, while LA took twice as many. Was it the change to the 4-5-1 formation in the 77th minute? Was it the injury to Nat Borchers in the 70th minute? I actually think in watching the match again that David Horst did an incredible job filling in off the bench, and I am not sure if his injury was picked up in the match or in practice but as I look back he was huge in the box. I think Tony Beltran was one of the top players on the pitch, not many defenders can go one on one with Landon and simply close him down and take the ball away, but Tony did. I think for 75 minutes RSL played an aggressive attacking style, I thought we would see some Fabi plays like we did last year but Fabi failed to get a single shot off in his 34 minutes of play, could it have been the lack of Javi?
I think before the match, if someone had asked if we could have beat LA without Rimando, Morales, Olave and losing Borchers with 20 plus minutes left in the match, most of us probably would have thought a draw would have been a good thing? But seeing how well we played in the first half and most of the second half, the draw was a huge disappointment, to give up the PK in stoppage time was a heartbreaker but when you have so many bodies in the box, 8 or more on both the handball and the goal, strange things will happen and they did. I still have a bit of an issue with the hand ball, if you refer to the US Soccer guidelines that were given to MLS officials:
Handling the Ball: Law 12
This year, several new guidelines have been introduced to assist match officials with making a determination as to whether a handling offense has occurred. This criteria or framework can be reviewed as part of the 2009 Referee Program Directives. Officials have been provided three (3) new guidelines to use to assist in deciphering whether to penalize a player for handling the ball:
Making yourself bigger
Did the player make his/her body bigger? Did the hand or arm take away space and passing lanes from the opponent? Did the player use the hand/arm to occupy more space by extending his/her reach? Was the hand/arm used as a barrier?
Unnatural position
Is the arm or hand in a position that is not normal or natural for a player performing the task at hand?
Did the player benefit?
After considering the two criteria above, the referee should also consider the result of the player’s action by asking:
Did the defender’s action (handling of the ball) deny an opportunity (for example, a pass or shot on goal) that would have otherwise been available to the opponent?
Did the offending player gain an unfair tactical advantage from contact with the hand/arm which enabled him to retain possession?
In other words: Did the player benefit by putting his hand/arm in an “unnatural position?” The referee needs to be able to quickly calculate the result of the player’s action to determine whether a hand ball offence has been committed.
So I have watched the replay at least a dozen times, Will didn’t make himself bigger, he wasn’t in an unnatural position, but he did benefit from the play. The question is without the first two criteria and the fact that if the ball wouldn’t have hit his arm it would likely have been kicked clear of the area because Will was in a great defensive position, was it a PK? Well against LA anything that is close goes their way, they know, their fans know it, and most everyone who watches MLS knows it. The numbers talk for themselves this year 3 of the 13 PK’s issued have been to LA, each time they either gave LA a lead or evened the score letting LA get a draw. It was called and that is fact, and there is no changing it. I thought the fact that RSL pulled out everything they could in attack after that PK and the take down of Espindola in the box that resulted was clear and Will Johnson’s PK was solid and without the minute of drama with kissing and grass pulling that is done by Landycakes.
The final goal was simply a failure to clear the ball, RSL had a foot or head on the ball 4 times before the goal and could not clear it beyond the box with any of those efforts, and ended with a sublime shot from an odd angle by Mike Magee. I thought New York made two bad moves this off season, one was letting Dave van den Bergh go to Dallas and the other was letting Magee go, and the result so far is that only one team has more losses than New York so far this season.
While the ending was a heartbreaker the final 5 minutes were one of the most exciting rollercoaster rides in RSL history, the shame is that it simply didn’t end like we hoped but all things considered a draw when you’re missing 3 of your ironmen starters (2700 minutes for Rimando, 2500 for Morales, and 2000 for Olave) and lose two starters due to injury during the match, isn’t the worst that could have happened.
RSL 0 - Chivas 1
Well we knew that RSL had to try something different when facing Chivas, heck we had only beat them once at the HDC and coming into the match Chivas was the best team in MLS with an impressive 6-1-1 record. So it was the 4-5-1 formation, which caused RSL problems during the final 15 minutes of the midweek match, with Raphael Cox getting the start in support of the normal midfield of Mathis, Beckerman, Morales and Johnson. The rookie did OK but with too many bodies in the midfield RSL struggled to get passes connected, a big part of that could be due to a very slick surface. How slick you might ask? Well just watch the replay and see the 7 times that Kyle Beckerman slipped and fell without any contact, or the many slips by other RSL players.
The formation and results were better than RSL had done in their previous road matches, no goal given up in the first 20 minutes, in fact the two sides went into half time tied at 0-0. The match should have taken a very different turn in the 24th minute as Kljestan slide into Chris Seitz with his spikes up late, and while he got a yellow card that foul should have been a red. It is funny how the Chivas announce team saw it one way and the RSL team saw it very differently, it was clear that Sacha wasn’t going for a shot you don’t do that with your spikes up. The second half saw RSL continue to play a more conservative style than most of us are used to this year and it was working but a failed clearance by Kyle Beckerman left the ball at the top of the box for Sacha who played it out to a completely unmarked Nagamura at the top of the box, who fired a shot which Beckerman tried to stop by sticking out his foot, but it sailed past a diving Seitz for the only goal of the night.
RSL tried to get back into the match by bringing in Findley, Williams and Espindola all before the 75th minute in an attempt to boost the offensive effort, but even with a lot of fire power on the pitch Chivas still continued to get the better offensive efforts. The match ended with RSL being outshot 17-10, and Chivas having a 5-2 lead in shots on goal.
So RSL still have to score a goal on the road, but they will have two more chances before the end of the month to get the first ever RSL road win before June. To get a win will require RSL to score, the good thing for RSL is they will be facing two of the worst defenses in MLS in San Jose (worst with 15 goals allowed), and DC United (4th worst with 13 goals allowed). First up will be KC, the Wiz come in with 11 points in 9 matches and a 3-4-2 record and 12 goals scored and 12 allowed. KC on the road are 1-3-1 with 6 scored and 8 allowed, and this will be their first ever trip to Rio Tinto, a fact that can’t get their confidence up. No team has ever won their first ever match at the stadium and in regular season play RSL is 4-0-2 at their new home. More impressive is that RSL has scored 18 goals in those 6 matches while giving up just 6, so it could be another exciting night at Rio Tinto.
Thoughts
Well I have to say that I was very disappointed at the RSL effort in both matches, but also I see some marks of improvement. In the LA match we showed that we can deal with a team that tries the pack it in method of play, as for most of the match LA played 9 men behind the ball and were content to just break up RSL attacks and look for golden chances to counter. That has to frustrate a player like Landon, who is an attack minded player by nature, I thought for us to play without stalwarts like Olave, Morales, and Rimando was going to be tough enough but after seeing us playing well against the packed in Galaxy, I expected that we would be able to hold onto the 1-0 lead. There have been few times when I have seen or heard Jason frustrated at how the team has played, but in the post match comments you could tell that he wasn’t happy that the team couldn’t adjust to the 4-5-1 and took that as a sign to stop playing aggressively and just sit back and try to defend the Galaxy attack. I thought it was good to see Fabi back on the pitch, he looked good but you could tell he struggled a bit to get into the flow of the offense, his run in stoppage time was impressive and it would have been good to see him finish the chance.
I thought for his first MLS start that Seitz did a decent job, he is a more physical keeper than is Rimando, but he seemed to be a little overly aggressive. He was right on in guessing which way Landycakes would go on his PK but Chris got to the spot a second too quick and the ball slipped under his arm, He did the right thing to guard the near post during the final seconds of the attack but left just enough room for that ball to sneak between his legs. I thought Tony played a great game he closed down a number of Galaxy counters and pushed forward all night in support of the offense, it showed what he is capable of. I thought Andy did a great job for 70 minutes but seemed to run out of steam towards the end of the match, probably caused by the fact that he is more used to coming off the bench in recent matches. I thought Horst did a great job coming in for the injured Borchers, he got to a number of balls played into the box, and I was impressed how high he got when clearing a couple balls played in.
I fully understand what Jason was thinking going into the Chivas match, play like most MLS sides do when on the road, play for the draw. It was working and if the ball had been cleared out of danger by Kyle, it would have been interesting to see if Jason would have still made the aggressive offensive subs as he did in trying to get us back even with Chivas. It showed that we can, when needed play a more defensive style of play, and the reality is until we show an ability to finish on the road that the style may just keep us in matches. There was no second goal, even when we switched to the attacking style we were able to keep Chivas from getting a second goal. A lot of credit goes to Chris Seitz playing another quality match.
So while the results were not what I or any other RSL fan had hoped for, we were able to see areas of improvement and some other things came to light that will have to be worked on. I can’t wait for this weekend, the forecast is for 75 and sunny on Saturday and I expect a good size crowd to come out in support of the home team.
OFF MY SOAPBOX