Salt Lake City – Olmes Garcia pushes Real Salt Lake back into 2nd place in the Western Conference after coming off the bench to get a brace in the second half tonight against Montreal Impact. Garcia’s first two goals of the season lifted RSL to a 3-1 win and hopefully leads to improvements in the striker corps for the Claret and Cobalt.
Since the injury to Alvaro Sabario, RSL has struggled to find a the rhythm up front, if Garcia can build on his performance tonight that might change.
The deciding moment of the match occurred in the 65th minute of play, when Issey Nakajima-Farran was issued a red card for a studs up challenge to leave the Impact a man down for the remaining 25 minutes of the match. Real Salt Lake was able to take advantage of the situation 5 minutes later as Garcia scored off a Javier Morales assist in the 70th minute and then again in the 3rd minute of second half stoppage time on another Morales assist.
The match started off with a bang for RSL when Luke Mullholland scored off of a Chris Schuler assist in the 3rd minute of play. Later in the 31st minute Nick Rimando was denied the clean sheet when Hassoun Camara was able to score Montreal’s lone goal of the night.
Evan Bush was having a good night that included a great save that should have been a goal on Javier Morales and then recovered very well on the follow-up by Garcia, but he just couldn’t contain the Real Salt Lake pressure after the red card put his club a man down.
Quotes for Real Salt Lake Head Coach Jeff Cassar
On the win – “We’ve got to get points, especially against a team that is struggling at this moment, But they have very dangerous players like I said. We have to be conscious of that.”
On Montreal – “If you keep them off the board, chances are you’re going to have a good result against them.”
Lineups
Real Salt Lake: Nick Rimando; Chris Schuler; Nat Borchers; Tony Beltran; Chris Wingert; Javier Morales (John Stertzer, 94′); Kyle Beckerman; Ned Grabavoy; Luke Mullholland (Cole Grossman, 83′); Robbie Findley (Olmes Garcia, 59′); Joao Plata
Montreal Impact: Evan Bush; Krzyztof Krol; Heath Pearce; Matteo Ferrari; Hassoun Camara, Calum Mallace (Jeremy Gagnon-Lapare, 62′), Patrice Bernier; Issey Nakajima-Far; Felipe Martins Camponholi (Justin Mapp, 62′); Adres Romero; Marco Di Vaio (Jack McInerney, 77′)
Next up for RSL:
Real Salt Lake (8-4-8) welcomes New York Red Bulls (5-6-9) to Rio Tinto Stadium on July 30th at 7:00 PM, and then a quick turn around as they visit the Colorado Rapids (7-6-6) on August 2nd.
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