SANDY, Utah — Real Salt Lake players and coaches have stated it time and again: When they are playing at home, nothing less than three points is acceptable.
That philosophy has led to many terrific endings at Rio Tinto Stadium. Unfortunately, it has also led to a couple of disappointments as well and Saturday night's 2-1 loss to FC Dallas was definitely one of the latter.
"We are always aggressive at home," said defender Nat Borchers. "We want to get three points, and we are going to push forward to get those three points. We obviously got caught up in this instance."
FC Dallas had already scored against the run of play in the 61st minute, but RSL had answered with an Álvaro Saborío goal in the 76th minute. With the game level, the Claret-and-Cobalt threw huge numbers into the attack. With nine Real Salt Lake men forward, Dallas got a second goal on a 2-on-1 break with Brek Shea and David Ferreira taking advantage and scoring in the 94th minute. But don't expect RSL to change their philosophy on attacking.
HIGHLIGHTS: RSL 1, DAL 2
"The second [goal] comes off of our aggressive decisions," said RSL head coach Jason Kreis. "Again, we are trying to get players forward and going after the win, a tie is not good enough for us at home."
Rather than change the game plan, Kreis said they simply need to execute it better.
"The beakdown for me was what happened in our half of the field and not what happened in their half the field," he said. "We go to serve the ball in with [Tony] Beltran, and the ball pops out to, I think, Jackson and Beltran and [Luis] Gil were both there to either make a tackle or make a foul.
"One of the two has to happen ... [and] unfortunately, neither happened and he turned and was able to play a long pass, and then one more pass and the ball is in the back of our net. We have got to continue to take care of details."
Beltran confessed after the game that he was aware of his mistake and hoped to learn from it.
"We knew Dallas were good on the counter attack," said the defender. "We knew we had to beware of it. I didn't do a good enough job there at the end. ... I probably should have taken another yellow and just taken the red card. Unfortunately, that happened and we just have to move on."
