Neither Team Happy In Real Salt Lake/San Jose Draw

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MLS: Yura Movsisyan, Real Salt Lake, July 2008 (ISI)

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By Randy Davis

SANDY, Utah - Real Salt Lake managed to get a late equalizer against visiting San Jose on Friday night. The goal came in stoppage time with RSL down a man after forward Fabian Espindola picked up a red card.

You would think that result would make a coach happy, but Coach Jason Kreis was struggling to see the bright side of things,

“It’s difficult for me to take a whole lot of pleasure on the night to be honest, because as we have publicly stated it’s three points or bust at home. We didn’t get three points, so it’s a failure.”

Kreis was also disappointed with his team’s mental approach to the game. They were playing an opponent at home that is at the bottom of the table, and he felt that the team took the match for granted.

“That type of thinking is part of the problem I think with our team. Every time we face a team that’s down lower on the table than we are, we think we’ve just got to show up and we’re going to win. For me that’s gotta change,” the RSL manager said.

This match also saw Real Salt Lake pick up their second red card in their last three matches. Both incidents were players who had been having personal battles with opposing players and let their opponent get the best of them. Two weeks ago it was Jamison Olave losing his cool against Houston’s Brian Ching.  In this one it was Espindola who had gotten into a scuffle with San Jose’s Brandon McDonald just moments earlier. Regardless, Kreis isn’t happy about the trend.

“(I’m) very, very frustrated. These decisions are costing us points. These are personal decisions and their costing the team,” he said after the match.

Real Salt Lake forward Yura Movsisyan lamented the missed chances as his team outshot their opponent by a 19 to 9 margin,

 “We didn’t finish, we couldn’t put one in. These guys, you could tell they were tired already and it was just a matter of us being sharp and we just weren’t sharp enough today. I don’t think I got a shot, which was very disappointing.”

The players on the San Jose side didn’t seem extremely happy with the result either despite picking up only their second road point on the season. The team felt that they laid back and absorbed too much pressure after going up a man on the Espindola red card. Goalkeeper Joe Cannon who felt a lot of this pressure expressed frustration with his teams posture in the second half.

“It seems like with this team every time we do score (they) tend to want to absorb pressure. You’ve got to give Salt Lake credit, they just kept fighting,” Cannon said.

Teammate Arturo Alvarez who scored the San Jose goal earlier in the half was also displeased with giving up the equalizer. It’s a habit that he felt the team has done far too often, now giving up their 6th goal on the season after the 75th minute.

“We’ve got to make sure that we don’t give up a goal in the last minutes of the game. You know it’s happened a few times on the season, and we definitely got to work on that as a team together. If we can do that we can turn our season around,” said Alvarez.

San Jose Coach Frank Yallop seemed to be more positive about the result. Yes, the team was ahead and conceded a stoppage time goal. Yes, the team failed to capitalize on the man advantage, but this is a team that had only managed one other road point on the season and sits at the bottom of the table. He feels like this is something to build on.

“It’s so emotional, in a game when you work 90-plus minutes and then one ball breaks you down,” said Yallop. “I thought that Salt Lake probably deserved to get a point. Conceding late goals has been a bit of a problem for us, but tonight’s performance was a good one for us.”

Randy Davis covers Real Salt Lake for Goal.com

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