SANDY, Utah — Real Salt Lake coach Jason Kreis made no qualms about it: he feels like his club was cheated out of two points.
RSL played to a 1-1 draw with the Chicago Fire Saturday night, but the man roaming the sideline for the Claret and Cobalt didn't agree with how the Fire scored — off a long throw-in from by Jalil Anibaba that went all the way into the RSL penalty area, took a flick and was finished by Quincy Amarikwa.
OPTA Chalkboard: RSL dominate, but leave the door open
"Love it. Great soccer isn't it? Beautiful," snarked Kreis when asked about long throw-ins in general during the post-game press conference. "I have a lot of thoughts. I'm trying not to get myself in too much trouble or put myself up for too much chastisement, but hell with it, I will. For me, that's a foul throw. I've been saying that for the last two years — that a lot of these long throw-ins that we're seeing now, are frankly just foul in my eyes.
"I've asked referees about it, don’t get too much response to it. [When] I grew up you had, you had to throw the ball in with two hands, not one," Kreis continued. "We're seeing a lot players use almost completely one hand. I'm tempted maybe the next game I'll send out my players and maybe we will just throw it in with one hand and see if that gets called against us.”
RSL defender Nat Borchers may not have gone as far as his coach, but he said it is a tough thing to deal with.
"It seems like every other team in the league has one except for us," he said to reporters. "It's frustrating, for sure, because every time the ball goes out for a throw in our half the field, it is a set-piece. But again, we have to deal with those things better if we want to be an elite team in this league."
Fellow defender Chris Wingert echoed the sentiments of his teammate.
"It's just frustrating that we play decent soccer and work hard and finally finish one, and let up a goal on a long throw," Wingert told mlssoccer.com. "It's our own fault. We’ve got to be sharper on set-pieces and we talk about that all the time. We did all the hard work to finally bury a great goal, and then we let up a goal like that. It's just frustrating."
So does he agree with the coach that the throw is illegal? Maybe, but he doesn’t have time to deal with the issue.
"That may be true," said Wingert if the ball is a foul throw, "but as players on the field, we're just trying to worry about trying to mark and make sure they don't score. We didn't do a good enough job on that one."
