Real Salt Lake coach Jason Kreis sat alone in his corner of the locker room perplexed, pondering, after his team's 4-1 loss at D.C. United. He stared blankly, almost expressionless, his right leg crossed over his left, his fingers clenched together sitting softly on his knee.
His team's struggles on the road continue and neither he, nor his players, can seem to find out why.
"It's hard to put your finger on one thing," said Kreis. "You try look at each game and break it down into the moments in each game and for us tonight it starts with the first penalty kick after I thought we had done well enough to get into halftime even. Then I think we are in a much better position ... because at the moment we gave away that second penalty, I felt like we were creating chances and doing pretty well."
"We need a win, that's plain and simple," added an equally mystified Carey Talley, one of several United alums who now play for Salt Lake.
Real gave away two penalty kick goals, both converted by Jaime Moreno, one just after the half hour mark of the match and the other only seven minutes into the second half. Moreno assisted on United's other two goals, both full volleys late in the match from Santino Quaranta and Marcelo Gallardo.
Quaranta's goal would have surely been a goal of the week candidate until Gallardo's magnificent blast from a severe angle on the right side of the area found the upper left corner of the net, beating a diving Nick Rimando.
Real took full advantage of a primarily second-string United squad two weeks ago, embarrassing the reigning Supporters' Shield holders 4-0 at Rice-Eccles Stadium. United chose to rest many of their frontline players, including Gallardo, and a few that did play had never played on nor seen FieldTurf in their lives.
But on that day, regardless of the opposition, Kreis got excellent performances from several players including two goals from Kyle Beckerman, a goal and an assist from Robbie Findley and two helpers from another former United stalwart, Dema Kovalenko.
Those performances were nowhere to be found in Washington, however. Beckerman had only two shots and was totally marked out of the game by Clyde Simms. Findley touched the ball infrequently and Kovalenko didn't get any face time until the 86th minute when he shared yellow cards with Gallardo.
"I think there were again quite a few guys didn't have a good night for us," said Kreis. "We have to realize that we need all of our players to have pretty decent nights or maybe just a few of them can have off nights but if there is too many of them out there that are having an off night we won't succeed."
Real equaling, if not exceeding, United's intensity and attacking savvy early in the match only added to the puzzlement of another poor road result.
"The first 15 minutes we had a couple of decent opportunities and we need to take advantage of those," said Talley. "I don't think that they came out and matched us in the first 15, 20 minutes. I think it was a very even game and I think we put enough pressure on them that they passed four or five balls out of bounds in the first 20 minutes. I think we matched their intensity ... it was a bit of a struggle. We got put in a hole there with two penalties; it altered the momentum of the game."
"I'm not sure," added Rimando, another former United player, on why the road lapses continue. "It's a different game when you play on grass and we knew they were hungry for a win. We came out and played good and go at them and it looks like it's going to be a good game and they get a PK, we fall back a little bit and we start to chase the game and every time we to start to chase a game we open up and they get chances and they score."
United altered their formation from the match two weeks ago, switching to a 3-5-2, leaving very little space for Beckerman and Javier Morales, space they had repeatedly with United's four-man midfield.
"They had some good possessions in their 3-5-2 so it's pretty difficult to get numbers in there against them -- they always seem to have a man open and when you're up two goals it's even easier," said a dejected Beckerman.
After it all was completed, Kreis and his team are beyond the proverbial and cliché moral victories.
"Oh yeah, absolutely," Kreis said. "There is not much but to come in and say, 'Hey, we got a game Wednesday night and another one on Saturday' and we'll see how we respond."
Chris Snear is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
