Carson City, CA – Real Salt Lake fails to get a result against the LA Galaxy in their 3rd meeting this year. RSL was looking to capitalize on the return of Nick Rimando and Kyle Beckerman to kick-start the second half of the season after the win last week against the New England Revolution, but the hill was too high to climb in what was obviously hostile territory.
The match was not without a couple of highly charged moments, particularly late in the match starting off with what looked clearly like a penalty in the 85th minute when Juninho kicked Chris Wingert in the face in the penalty area. Not only was no penalty kick given, but no card was issued. The match seemed to get more out of control in what was not a shining night for referee Silviu Petrescu as the yellow cards started to pile up during added time.
The lone goal of the match was scored by Gyasi Zardes in the 20th minute of play after an interesting exchange where a foul was committed and RSL was allowed to play the advantage which the promptly gave up to the Galaxy and Javier Morales stayed down on the turf. With Morales out of the play Marcelo Sarvas found Zardes for the goal.
The play of Alvaro Sabario is sorely missed as RSL is still struggling to finish the plays and find the net. There were enough opportunities to pull even but without the opportunistic Sabario there was just no one that could provide the closing needed.
Lineups:
Real Salt Lake: Nick Rimando, Chris Wingert, Nat Borchers, Chris Schuler, Tony Beltran; Kyle Beckerman; John Stertzer (Luke Mulholland, 63′); Luis Gil (Ned Grabavoy, 45′); Javier Morales; Devon Sandoval (Olmes Garcia, 72′); Joao Platao
LA Galaxy: Jaime Penedo; Robbie Rogers, Tommy Meyer; A.J. DeLaGarza; Dan Gargan; Marcelo Sarvas; Landon Donovan; Baggio Husidic (Stefan Ishizaki, 79′); Vitor Gomes Perriera Junior (Kenny Walker, 90′); Robbie Keane (Jose Leonardo Ribeiro Da Silva, 95′); Gyasi Zardes
Quotes From the Locker Room – Real Salt Lake Head Coach Jeff Cassar
On the Zardes goal: “It was the referee giving us advantage, and then the play breaks down,” Cassar said. “I’ll take a free kick 25 yards away from goal anytime. He doesn’t go back and give the guy a yellow card — which it clearly was a yellow card. I don’t know how many times, off the top of my head, Javi was fouled tonight, but it was a lot of times. When did they get their yellow card? Their first yellow card? Ninety-plus minutes. That doesn’t work.”
On the play on Wingert in the 85′: “That’s a foul, Chris wasn’t putting his head down low to get kicked in the face. It’s right there.”
Quotes From the Locker Room – LA Galaxy Head Coach Bruce Arena
On today’s result: “I think we played a fairly solid 90 minutes tonight. Had chances to get a second goal on a few occasions in the second half. We could have made the game a little easier. It’s good for us to win a game like this. It’s what I would call a good ugly game against a good team. We did a job good on the defensive end of the field. That was encouraging. Any time you get a shut out speaks volumes for the whole team. I think for the most part we played well and deserved to get the three points tonight. We know we need to get a little bit better. That’s certainly not a perfect performance.”
On the goal: “Good goal. If I remember correctly, Marcelo [Sarvas], on the right side, cut a ball in and I think Landon [Donovan] dummied it to Gyasi [Zardes]. And, obviously a pretty good finish off the two posts.”
On Robbie Rogers: “He’s getting a lot of experience in that position. He’s been very good defensively and does a good job going forward. We are very pleased with his performance.”
On Zardes, Donovan and Keane: “They did alright. We could be better. We were playing against three good players in [Kyle] Beckerman, [Nat] Borchers and [Chris] Schuler. It was a good battle for 90 minutes, but I think they did well.”
Next up for RSL:
Real Salt Lake (7-4-7)will return home for its next match, hosting the Vancouver Whitecaps (6-4-7) at Rio Tinto Staduim Saturday, July 19th.