RSL Falls to Chivas USA After Early Red Card

Carson, California – Real Salt Lake fell to Chivas USA 0 – 1 after an early red card required RSL to play with 10 men for the remaining 82 minutes. The match played at Stubhub center in front over just over 6000 fans was still an exciting matching seeing RSL control the ball much of game even though they were short handed.  Real Salt Lake midfielder Luke Mulholland was given a red card for a spikes up tackle on Chivas USA midfielder Martin Rivero at the 8:12 second mark and the Red Card brings with it an automatic ejection from the game with no replacement player.

Chivas USA scored the lone goal of the match in the 35th minute as defender Tony Lochhead crossed the ball from the left side that bent across the field to forward Erick Torres who took the ball directly out of the air ending with an wicked right footed strike to the top right corner of the net from 15 yards out.  Twitter blazed with terms like “Ultimate Skill Check” to describe the shot by Torres.

Despite going down a man, RSL maintained a 57% to 43% possession advantage over Chivas USA for the match.  The big difference was the number of shots Chivas had 11, compared to 3 RSL opportunities.  RSL misses the marksmanship of injured forward Alvaro Saborio more than we would like to admit.  Also noted was the 14 fouls Chivas was called for opposed to the 9 called on RSL. This too is an indication of RSL missing the captain Kyle Beckerman who leads the team in fouls but uses them in the most crafty and opportunistic times.  Another interesting stat was RSL had 6 corner kicks compared to the 4 for Chivas.

Lineups

Real Salt Lake (4-1-2-1-2): Jeff Attinella; Chris Wingert, Nat Borchers, Chris Schuler, Abdoulie Mansally (Olmes Garcia, 73’); Cole Grossman (John Stertzer, 63’); Luis Gil, Luke Mulholland; Javier Morales (C); Joao Plata, Robbie Findley (Sebastian Velasquez, 63’)

Substitutes not used: Lalo Fernandez (GK), Aaron Maund, Kwame Watson-Siriboe, Devon Sandoval

Chivas USA (4-4-2): Dan Kennedy; Donny Toia, Carlos Bocanegra (C), Bobby Burling, Tony Lochhead; Eric Avila (Marky Delgado, 73’), Martin Rivero, Agustin Pelletieri, Mauro Rosales (Carlos Alvarez, 81’); Leandro Barrera (Ryan Finley, 84’), Erick Torres

Substitutes not used: Kristopher Tyrpak, Michael Nwiloh, Eriq Zavaleta, Matthew Dunn

Quotes From the Locker Room – Real Salt Lake Head Coach Jeff Cassar

Thoughts on RSL MF Luke Mulholland’s red card:

“The guys have been looking at it in the back and I think it looks pretty bad. I know speaking to Luke [Mulholland] that the intent wasn’t there. When you leave your feet and you expose your cleats, you leave yourself at the mercy at the referee. Hopefully we learn from it. We preach it all the time, ‘stay on your feet, stay on your feet.’ It’s a last ditch effort to leave your feet in the middle of the field. We put ourselves in a tough spot.”

Thoughts on the match:

“We put ourselves in that position, being down a man. I told them that we’ve lost three games this year, two of them we’ve given up red cards. It’s hard enough to win with 11, but with 10, especially early on, it’s very hard. So we’re going to learn from it, but the effort and the commitment from the guys and the fight was off the charts I think. I mean even to create several decent chances, and that’s what we talked about at halftime was we are going to get two or three chances, we knew we were, making sure we keep them off the board and we did that. Sometimes somebody has got to step up and really put it in the back of the net and take some initiative.”

On moving on to the next match v. New England:

“It’s a home game, it’s July 4th. We need three points without a doubt. I would say every game now is extremely important but any time you’re playing at home it’s key. And we’re going to focus on New England now.”

Quotes From the Locker Room – Chivas USA Head Coach Wilmer Cabrera

Thoughts on the game:

“It was a positive game for us. We started off well. Obviously after a break from MLS, because of the World Cup, it’s normal that all the teams are a little bit rusty with the level, but I think they didn’t have too many options. We could score an unbelievable and beautiful goal by [Erick] Cubo [Torres], who is doing fantastic. That gave us a good possibility to be administering the ball a little bit better and in the second half I think we had options to score another one and it was the desire. We created options but we didn’t finish those possibilities. It was good to finish with three points, a win at home and zero goals against and that’s important for the players.”

On Erick Torres:

“He’s a top scorer player. A player who wants to score, who works hard every day in practice to try to score, to get better, who loves to be around the goal and because he tries all these possibilities, he’s been scoring a lot of goals this year. It’s good for him and also it’s a very good motivation for the rest of the team to have him.”

Next up for RSL:

Real Salt Lake will return home for its next match, hosting New England Revolution at 8:00 p.m. MT at Rio Tinto Stadium on July 4th. Friday’s match will be followed by an Independence Day fireworks show.

 

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