Real Salt Lake: Ready to play
Sandy, UT – Real Salt Lake plays a complete 90 minutes of soccer to get 3 points against Sporting Kansas City. This is the second meeting of these clubs since Kansas City joined the Western Conference, the first meeting, in Kansas City ended in a 0-0 draw. With Sporting playing very well this year and RSL struggling, this could have been seen as a must with for the Claret and Cobalt.
RSL brought out a 4-2-3-1 formation this week as they still work on finding the perfect formula. From the result tonight, it looks like this formation was a winner. With Alvaro Saborio not in the 18 for this week, Devon Sandoval did a great job coming up big on a number of occasions tonight to show why Jeff Cassar likes Big Dev.
Sebastian Jaime: An amazing exhibition.
Sebastian Jaime played for 69 minutes in tonight’s match. He was all over the pitch and played with great intensity. Jaime was able to finally score his first MLS goal when he was on the receiving end of the first Javier Morales assist of the night in the 15th minute.
Sporting KC was able to level the score in the 30th minute of play when Dom Dwyer who appeared to be offsides was able to take an assist from Benny Feilhaber in the middle of the box and swipe one past Nick Rimando.
RSL had several other opportunities to score in the first half as multiple players were able to get past the last defender, but just couldn’t get on the right side of the ball for that final kick, as they went wide, hit the post.
Both teams showed that this is definitely a rivalry match up, and the referee did his best to try and keep things under control. Although Sporting led in the foul category with 15, while RSL had only 9, RSL was shown 5 yellow cards and SKC was only shown 2.
The entire team played with intensity tonight and looked as good in the 90th minute as they did in the first. This was most evident in the 3rd minutes of second half stoppage time when Javier Morales got his second assist of the night, this time Olmes Garcia was alone on the left, and shot hard to the right post via a deflection by Kansas City.
RSL should get a nice boost from the entire performance as they get a much-needed 3 points, have 2 players score for the first time this year, and get a club record 16 corner kicks.
Lineups
Real Salt Lake (4-5-6): Nick Rimando; Aaron Maund; Demar Phillips; Justen Glad; Tony Beltran; Luke Mulholland (Luis Gil, 70′); Javier Morales; Kyle Beckerman (C); Sebastian Jaime (Jordan Allen, 69′); Devon Sandoval; Joao Plata (Olmes Garcia, 83′)
Substitutes not used: Jeff Attinella; Phanuel Kavita; Sebastian Saucedo; John Stertzer
Sporting KC (6-2-6): Tim Melia; Jalil Anibaba; Kevin Ellis; Matt Besler (C); Amadou Dia (Saad Addul-Salaam, 91′); Graham Zusi; Krisztian Nemeth (Jacob Peterson, 75′); Dom Dwyer; Benny Feilhaber; Roger Espinoza; Soni Mustivar
Substitutes not used: Jon Kempin; Servando Carrasco; Marcel de Jong; Connor Hallisey; Chance Myers
Up Next for Real Salt Lake:
Real Salt Lake travels to Red Bull Arena for a mid-week match against the New York Red Bulls on Wednesday, June 24th.