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SANDY — Real Salt Lake fell 2-1 at home to Major League Soccer Western Conference opponent the San Jose Earthquakes Saturday night in front of a standing-room-only sell-out crowd, its first home loss in two months.
“It’s a difficult thing, I’m not going to fault the effort of the group because I do think that they worked extremely hard to break down a team that played extremely defensive tonight, and we knew they would,” said RSL head coach Jason Kreis. “But when it comes to the two goals that came against us, I thought that there was a little lack of focus again, a commitment to stand the marks in the box.”
San Jose was the first to see the back of the net off a goal by forward Steven Lenhart in the 18th minute. The Salt Lake side equalized immediately with a goal a minute later off midfielder Javier Morales, tying up the match at one goal apiece.
The Earthquakes used a set piece just two minutes later in the 21st minute off Lenhart again to take the lead for the rest of the first 45, sending RSL into halftime down a goal.
“Both balls were served into the box, headed by the same player, and he was literally unmarked on both plays — it’s not good enough,” said Kreis.
The loss put the Supporters' Shield a little more out of reach for the Salt Lake club, but not out of mind, yet.
“I think we need to see what the (Seattle-Los Angeles) result is tonight, see what the (New York-FC Dallas) result is tomorrow and then we can make a decision about how we're going to move forward,” said Kreis. “I’m not ready to make that decision right now, I probably still won’t be ready to throw in the towel on the Supporters' Shield, but perhaps I will. Perhaps we’ll put a huge focus on the Open Cup, put a huge focus on just trying to get ourselves in the playoffs and put a huge focus on trying to get our swagger back a little bit before the playoffs start.”
The loss also was the second consecutive for RSL and moved the Salt Lake club to 14-10-6 on the season, keeping it in the second place slot with 48 points for another week.
“We’re going to make mistakes, some of those mistakes are going to mean that we are going to get goals scored against us and we need to stick together and we need to have positive reactions and move forward from it,” said Kreis.
The Salt Lake side was without its leading scorer, forward Alvaro Saborio, due to a calf injury, which was suffered while he was in Costa Rica on international duty a couple weeks back.
He's a player the club misses in matches like Saturday's against the Earthquakes.
“We’ve seen before when we have an opponent that sits that far back in there, we need somebody to be in the box, to finish the goals, to make a run, to beat their opponent that’s defending and put it in the goal — so I do think we miss Sabo in matches like this, there’s no doubt about it,” said Kreis.
RSL will finish up the month of September on the road next weekend as it travels to Canada to face MLS Western Conference opponent the Vancouver Whitecaps Sept. 28. The Salt lake club will then return to Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup action just three days later as it hosts MLS Eastern Conference opponent D.C. United for the USOC final Oct. 1. Kira Terry is a sports writer covering Real Salt Lake for KSL.com. Follow her on Twitter, @kiraterry.
