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SANDY - Real Salt Lake will take to their home turf again this weekend as they host the Vancouver Whitecaps on Saturday. Head Coach Jason Kreis is still looking for them to step up to fill some voids as Vancouver will be a challenge for them.
Earlier this week the Vancouver Whitecaps announced that Head Coach Teitur Thordarson and goalkeeper coach Mike Salmon had left the club. This news wasn't pleasant for Kreis to hear as it could cause more of a challenge for RSL this weekend.
Other than being the first meeting ever between RSL and the Whitecaps, Kreis told ESPN 700 earlier this week that the emotions they will bring to the field will make the match dangerous.
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"It's an interesting opponent and it's going to be a lot of fresh faces and a lot of new faces that we've never played against. And then you add on top of that, that they've fired their coach (earlier this week) and they have a new coach, and you're going to have a very emotional group here coming to try and keep their jobs and sell themselves in front of a new coach," said Kreis.
"So it's going to be a dangerous, dangerous opponent for us."
The current director of soccer operations, Tom Soehn, took over responsibility as head coach for the Whitecaps. Assistant coaches Denis Hamlet and Colin Miller stayed with the club and will work under Soehn.
Besides the upcoming challenge with Vancouver, RSL has a few other challenges ahead of them.
With the Javier Morales injury and international duty making four top players unavailable to RSL, the starting roster will look a little different on Saturday than it has for the last few games.
In the interview with ESPN 700, Kreis stressed the point of sticking together as a team.
"I really think that it's about the details right now," Kreis said. "It's about answering the question of whether you're really going to put everything forward here over these next couple of weeks. Whether you're really going to put every ounce of effort that you have into these matches because that's what we're going to need if we want to get results. Right now we're going to have to stick together and we're going to have to have every player step forward and contribute."
Kreis also added the stress of needing his players to step up. "We need players now to step up and say, "I'm going to do the job, I'm going to turn the ball, I'm going to make the pass and I'm going to get on the end of things to score the goal, I'm going to lead this team to the next level," and we need a few more guys to be willing to do that."
Kreis was honest and said he recognizes the difficulties the international duty loses and injury has caused and will cause in the upcoming month before the international duty players return.
"I do think you have to be realistic and say without the personnel it's going to be difficult to do, to score the goals. We've got three, what we think, are very, very high-level forwards in this league unavailable to us at the moment and that makes things difficult, but I think we also need to be honest and say that we were having difficulties before they left," said Kreis.
Kreis also added, "So for me it doesn't come down to the forwards, it comes down to everybody giving that little bit extra and a few players stepping forward to take a little bit more responsibility in the attacking half of the field."
Despite all the challenges ahead for RSL, Kreis said multiple times during the interview that he's grateful for the fans that the club has and that they keep coming back.
"I do feel like we have fantastic fans here. We've had support here since day one through a lot of really thick times, just difficult, difficult times. So now over the past couple of years we feel like we've been able to give them something back. We've taken an extreme amount of pride not only in getting results at home, but in the way we've played at home and being the aggressors and really putting on a show for our fans."
The match is set for 7:00 p.m. on Saturday at Rio Tinto Stadium in Sandy.
Email: onlinesports@ksl.com
