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Saturday was a great game all the way till the final whistle in Frisco Texas, but if you were rooting for Real Salt Lake it wasn't the result you would of hoped for.
Fabian Espindola's goal in the 5th minute was a thing of beauty and power. Had that stood we would have been in great shape. As the game continued it was obvious FC Dallas was controlling the ball and the flow of the game with the style they wanted to play.
In the end Jeff Cunningham equalizer in the 44th still kept everything in RSL's favor. A few red cards later and you have the monkey wrench I was talking about earlier in the week. Playing with one less man on both teams opens the field up a lot more and you can make runs at the goal and Eric Avila was the man to find the space and a great touch on the ball to put Dallas up in this series 2 goals to 1.
Jason Kreis was obviously disappointed in the result and the flow of the game.
"The way we play requires a tremendous amount of energy from our players, and when we don't have that energy, it means that we don't have options to pass the ball," Kreis said. "You have to be moving and dynamic and never can be standing still. Maybe that early goal hurt us a little bit in that maybe we didn't think we needed to do as much when we had the ball."
Now with the series back in Salt Lake things are interesting for both teams. ReAL will be without Javier Moralis who will serve a one game suspension. That's got to demoralize Moralis who had to leave the MLS Cup finals early due to a foot injury last year.
On the flip side Dallas is down two players, Atiba Harris who was red carded in the 75th minute and Milton Rodriguez who looks to have a injury that will sideline him for Saturdays game. This will open up the game for both teams at Rio Tinto and you better believe Kreis is going to come after FCD early and often. One goal will secure it for RSL but it's a bit more complicated then that, but lets keep it simple, no goal for FC and one for RSL and this team advances to the Conference finals.
A few other things of interest: Commissioner Dan Garber spoke on Fox Soccer Channel about possible changes to the Playoff format. The audio can be heard here:
Personally I think a Conference set up is fine and I think the grand idea of MLS in North America would be to have 15 or 16 teams in each conference and each side qualifying 8 teams. That would mean 30 teams and I don't think the league will reach that number until the soonest being 2025. But, really I've given it about as much thought as cleaning my toilet at home.
