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SANDY — Coming off a three-match road trip, Real Salt Lake will open a five-match home stand Saturday night at Rio Tinto Stadium as it hosts Major League Soccer Eastern Conference opponent the Chicago Fire.
The Chicago-based team is a club that has tallied much success inside the walls of Rio Tinto in the past with a 3-2-2 record. However this season, the Windy City club currently sits in the eighth slot in the Eastern Conference with a 2-7-1 record thus far this season.
“Chicago is a team who’s had their ups and downs from the beginning of the season and probably a few more downs than ups, but last year showed themselves as a very good team, a team that’s extremely hard working for everything that they’re getting over there, a team that’s well coached,” RSL head coach Jason Kreis told ESPN 700 in a radio interview Wednesday.
The Claret and Cobalt will enter Saturday’s match not only off a big 4-1 win over Chivas USA Sunday, but sitting in second place in the Western Conference with 20 points and a 6-5-2 record.
With a near empty injury list, giving the Salt Lake club a deep roster, RSL will look to continue off its road success into its home stand and give its fans what they want.
“It’s a game that we again need to be very focused on doing the things that we do well, not be overly concerned about who our opponent is or what they’ve done over the first third of the season,” Kreis told ESPN 700. “We need to handle it as if we are playing the absolute best team, the first-place team in our league and get out there and give our fans, our home fans what they so, so crave.”
The RSL sideline boss also says the home stand is coming at a good time for the Salt Lake club and is hopeful for what the club could do with the lengthy home stand, even if the home stand presents a few challenges.
“I’m very hopeful that we can get on a roll now,” said Kreis. “We haven’t yet put together any thing that resembles anything close to a streak, and I believe that every good team in our league, every team that wins championships and wins trophies knows how to put together a consistent performance and collect up wins and streaks of points, so that will be the challenge for our guys going forward.
“It will also be the challenge that we’ve had occasionally in the past, and I think even this year where we’ve had a good performance, the very next week it turns out we didn’t give our best and that will be unacceptable, so that’s going to be clearly explained and delineated to the players before the match,” concluded Kreis.
The Claret and Cobalt will return to its pitch just three days following Saturday’s match with the Fire in pursuit of a different trophy, the Lamar U.S. Open Cup, as it hosts the NASL Atlanta Silverbacks Tuesday in a third-round Open Cup match.
RSL will return to MLS play the following Saturday as it opens the month of June and hosts Western Conference opponent the San Jose Earthquakes.
Kira Terry is a sports writer covering Real Salt Lake for KSL.com. Follow her on Twitter, @kiraterry.
