SANDY, Utah — After a quick breather in the midst of a arduous stretch of 10 games in seven weeks to start the season, Real Salt Lake have had time to reflect and take stock on their start to the 2012 season.
The verdict: a solid start.
HIGHLIGHTS: RSL 3, TOR 2
“I’m not ecstatic,” head coach Jason Kreis told reporters after training on Wednesday. “I’m not over the moon, but I am pleased. Frankly, the objective for us is to play a perfect game, and to dominate our opponent for 90 minutes, and we haven’t done that yet.”
While they haven’t dominated, RSL have established themselves as one of the best teams in the league thus far, as their 19-point haul and second place standing in the Western Conference shows.
But for Kreis, his squad has answered some very important points of uncertainty coming into this season.
“We had a lot of question marks in the offseason, and in the preseason even, about how we were going to do, and what our depth was going to look like and what kind of contributions we were going to get from new players,” explained Kreis. “The health of some of our more veteran players was a concern, and so far most of the answers have been positive.”
Defender Nat Borchers believes RSL are progressing nicely and there’s plenty more to come.
“[A record of[ 6-3-1, almost a third of the way through the season – we’re in a great position for how we’ve played,” Borchers said. “I think we’d like to be more consistent with our home games. We’ve given up a lot more goals than we’re used to, so the focus this week has been defending. So I think we still have some things to work on which is a good thing. We haven’t peaked out early in the season.”
Fellow defender Chris Wingert has tried to resist the urge to pay attention to the standings so early in the current campaign.
“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t look at the standings,” Wingert said. “You’re still thinking about where you are but in terms of how that affects where you’re going to end up, there’s still so much more stuff that has to happen.”
Instead, Wingert feels the squad needs to focus on the finer points.
“The key to getting results is not talking about the actual results, but it’s talking about the details of what you have to do and then the results tend to take care of themselves over the long haul,” Wingert said. “We’re trying to keep that mentality of one game at a time even when we have three in a week.”
