CARSON, Calif. - Coming off the heels of a confidence-building midweek U.S. Open Cup win, Real Salt Lake had every intention of carrying that momentum into Saturday night's league match against Chivas USA at The Home Depot Center.
It took Chivas USA all of 28 seconds to put a stop to that positive energy.
Maykel Galindo netted his first career MLS goal moments after the opening whistle and added a second goal eight minutes later to power Chivas to a 4-0 victory against RSL. Ante Razov also scored his 100th career goal and earned his place on the short list of players to reach the century mark. RSL's Jason Kreis (108 goals) and D.C. United's Jaime Moreno (105 goals) are the only other players to reach the milestone.
To add injury to insult, RSL forward Andy Williams suffered what is thought to have been a broken leg in the second half.
"It's preliminary until they get the X-rays but they think it's a lower leg, they think it's broken," said RSL coach John Ellinger.
The injury came in the 76th minute. Chivas USA midfielder Sacha Kljestan slid hard at Williams to make a play but his challenge was ill-placed and Williams' left leg caught the brunt of the blow. Kljestan was given a yellow card on the play.
"There's a disciplinary committee and they look at things but it's just one of those things you don't expect to see," said Ellinger. "Sacha's not a malicious kind of guy. It was just a poor decision and we made plenty of our own poor decisions in the first half."
The first half was a nightmare for RSL.
"Right from the beginning we weren't ready to play and they took it to us," said RSL midfielder Freddy Adu. "I don't know what it is we have to do but we each need to look at ourselves individually."
After the first two goals knocked the collective wind out of RSL, the visitors struggled to put together any semblance of an attack or maintain rhythm.
"We've played well up to this point," said Ellinger. "For us it's the fact that things that we've covered about having a fast start today and dealing with their high pressure, things that we talked about doing just didn't get done.
"You can only imagine how it feels when you're behind the 8-ball and the game's not a minute old. It's even worse at the end of the game when there's extra time and you get asked if you want the full extra time. It's not a good feeling."
"That was the moral of the story tonight, giving up two goals in the first 10 minutes away ... especially on a big field against Chivas," said RSL captain Jason Kreis. "Once you do that, you throw your tactics out the window. Obviously the second two goals they scored on us were a factor of that, we were just really trying to claw back into that game but it wasn't possible tonight."
One of the areas that RSL struggled in was on maintaining defensive pressure on Chivas USA.
"We talk about choices," said Ellinger. "Whether you track somebody or you don't, that's a choice. There was poor decision making and lack of tracking. We have nobody to blame but ourselves."
RSL's troubles started even before kickoff as defender Daniel Torres was a late scratch after hurting his hamstring during pre-game warmups.
Kreis acknowledged the challenge that posed to RSL.
"It definitely hurts, you have a set system with those back four, they're pretty comfortable with where they're at, who's around them and their relationships and it hurt," Kreis said."
RSL will need to put the loss behind them and have a good opportunity to do so as they will enjoy a nine-day break before starting a back-to-back home stand against the Colorado Rapids and New York Red Bulls.
"These types of games are as big a setback as the players let them be," said Kreis. "For me, this is a one-off game. We gave up two bad goals and then we couldn't sort things out. The passes weren't there, everything was just a little bit off tonight. It seemed like everything was a step off."
Ellinger echoed those sentiments.
"It's just one game. We have team goals, we set goals for number of points we want to get on the road and now we only have 14 games left to get the points that we want," he said. "You just kind of pass it off and move on."
Danny Bueno is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
