Real Salt Lake misses another opportunity for 3 points in a 2-2 draw against Western Conference foe Vancouver Whitecaps at Rio Tinto Stadium on Saturday night.
What started out as complete dominance by RSL in the early minutes of the match quickly with Joao Plata connecting in the 2nd minute of play off of a pass from Luke Mulholland for the 3rd goal of the season. That was followed up in the 9th minute by Alvaro Sabario in a strike that is sure be up for Goal of the week.
RSL really did dominate the first 80 minutes of play in this match and it looked as if those two early goals decided the match, however that all seemed to change starting in last third of the match. In the 63rd minute of play Sebastian Velasquez was substituted for Luke Mulholland and later in the 74th minute Joao Plata was replaced with Olmes Garcia. The revision to the lineup was just not able to retain the intensity that had kept RSL in charge for the first 80 minutes of play.
Vancouver took advantage of this apparent out of sync RSL side with their first goal of the night in the 86th minute by Nicolas Mezquida off of a Nick Rimando save and a deflection. Rimando will have to wait to tie Kevin Hartman’s MLS shutout record.
The real heart breaker for RSL came in the 4th minute of added time when Sebastian Fernandez kicked the long ball from 35 yards out to rocket past Rimando that gave us the final score of 2-2.
Real Salt Lake is still the only unbeaten club in MLS, and with 14 points they are in third place in the Western Conference.
Up Next:
Real Salt Lake (3-0-5) travels to Toyota Park to take on the Chicago Fire (0-1-6) on May 3rd at 6:30 MST.
Anyone have the count on how many times a goal has been scored on the RSL defense during extended time?