SALT LAKE CITY - Two weeks ago, without Alecko Eskandarian and Andy Williams available, Real Salt Lake stunned the top team in the league when they beat Houston Dynamo.
Now, after two weeks of training uninterrupted by league play, Real Salt Lake has a full roster of players available, including a trio of Argentinians who have been cleared by the government to play Saturday against the Chicago Fire. With everything working in its favor, Salt Lake should feel especially confident playing against the sixth-place team in the East.
"It's good to have a feeling of that, the last time you checked, we won," midfielder Carey Talley said. "I think everybody's got a good feeling right now, and everybody is looking forward to [Saturday], especially with some of their high profile players coming in, and a few of us are licking our chops a little bit."
Real have been concerned about the two-week break between games, hoping they could keep up the momentum they started building with that 1-0 win against Houston. To address the issue, coach Jason Kreis has worked the team hard.
"Last week was a very tough week, even ending with a scrimmage on Saturday, the guys were pretty spent by the end of that game," Talley said. "They gave us a good week, and we started off pretty tough this week, and then tapered off. We are going to be peaking in terms of our fitness level."
With only two wins on the season and 12 points through 17 games, Real has to play for victories at home. Chicago (5-8-5) has seen some success recently, and with the addition of Cuauhtemoc Blanco, should pose a difficult test.
"He is a special player," Kreis said. "They try to get the ball in to him on offense as much as possible. He has a very high passing ability, he can make very sharp passes, even when he has a defender on him very tight."
But Real also has some new players that should perform well. Javier Morales, Edgar Espindola and Matias Mantilla each signed contracts this week, and now are among the six highest-paid players on the team along with Eddie Pope, Eskandarian and Kyle Beckerman.
To sign the three players to such lucrative contracts, Kreis must see something he likes in each of them. They have been in training with the team since the beginning of the month.
"All three of them have come on in leaps and bounds over the past two or two-and-a-half weeks," Kreis said. And yet, without having seen them play a league match, the danger exists that they could turn out to be another Luis Tejada, the Panamanian striker who made just one appearance, lasting just two minutes.
"That's really a time-will-tell issue," Kreis said. "I don't think that any of them can jump right in tomorrow and feel 100 percent comfortable with how the game is played here and the surface that we play on. We'll have to see."
Mantilla, at least, feels comfortable with his place on the team.
"It's not easy, but it's time now and I have to work," Mantilla said. "The guys have been awesome; they have received us too well. There's no problem with that. We are all going in the right direction."
Peter Richins is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
