Real Salt Lake vs. Chivas de Guadalajara, the unfriendly recap
October 10, 2009 by f4denz.
So let me start by making this statement up front, I do not like the style of soccer played by most Mexican teams and while I was impressed earlier this year by the RSL vs. Club America match and the way both teams played, I now remember why I feel that way. I get that Chivas is struggling in their own league and with a 3-4-3 record they came to town looking to try to get some momentum, and it was clear from the start of the match that they thought they would be able to dictate how the match would be played. I have to imagine they were a surprised when RSL dominated the first minutes of the match, RSL had 4 shots in the first 15 minutes, with 3 on goal and Chivas had not a single shot in the first half. They started kicking and playing a very dirty style but the official actually did a decent job of calling fouls, and RSL did a decent job of creating shots from the set pieces, but couldn’t convert.
Yura did a nice job of attacking the ball when Chivas had it in their own half and his effort created the scoring opportunity that Espindola took advantage of to get the only goal of the first half. It was clear once RSL went up that Chivas began playing even more physical and it was funny how many times it was noticed by the Fox Soccer Channel TV crew. I was impressed with the efforts of Nelson Gonzales, David Horst, and Chris Seitz all who have seen limited first team action this year and I thought all of them did well with the minutes they were given, and I would not be surprised if Nelson starts to get a shot at playing time over the next couple weeks. As the match got more and more physical it ended up with a number of mini scrums with the most significant being the one in the last minutes of the first half when Olave confronted Chivas players after a late tackle on Andy Williams, it escalated with Edgar Solis trying to slap Olave and both players being issued red cards. If that weren’t enough the issue continued into the tunnel as punches and attempted punches were thrown and the local police had to step in to restore order, it was funny to hear a Sandy police sergeant tell me that they had more officers on the field level than in the stands.
The second half saw RSL do something I can’t remember ever seeing for more than a couple minutes at a time, they played 3 in the back for the second half. As Chivas started playing long ball and while that didn’t work, they did take advantage of a midfield turnover to get a goal from Omar Esparza. RSL quickly got back on the attack and dominated the rest of the half with 5 shots and all of them on goal and several required quality saves by Chivas keeper Victor Hernandez. It was fun to see RSL pushing so forward in the attack at all 9 field players at times were on the Chivas half of the pitch, I was reminded for much of the match of the style we played during the final weeks of last year and hopefully a sign of things to come over the next couple weeks.
Well there is a ton of World Cup qualifying this weekend but MLS still has some matches going on and all 3 of them could impact RSL’s playoff chances:
San Jose 1 at Toronto FC 2 (best result for RSL would be a San Jose win)
Kansas City 0 at Chivas 2 (a Chivas win is actually best for RSL)
and the big one Columbus 2 at New England 2 (a Crew win would be a huge boost for RSL)
The facts are simply RSL can’t be eliminated from the playoffs this weekend and if Columbus and San Jose can pull off road wins, well RSL would jump back above a 25% chance of making the playoffs heading into the Wednesday matchup with the Red Bulls.
OFF MY SOAPBOX
3-0-0, line ‘em up and knock ‘em down.