CARSON, Calif -- Real Salt Lake came up short in their Audi 2016 MLS Cup Playoffs Knockout Round match against the LA Galaxy Wednesday night, unable to reverse trends which had plagued the team over the last few weeks.
Going into the postseason, RSL were winless in their last seven matches and had lost five consecutive matches on the road. Their play throughout the year was enough to give them a chance to find their playoff form, but instead the club suffered its 12th road loss of 2016.
After the match head coach Jeff Cassar said he was, “just disappointed,” in how the season had gone.
“We had done so well, we had positioned ourselves so well. There are a few reasons why we sputtered towards the end, but we were never able to capitalize for our good play in the games; putting the ball in the back of the net. We seemed to start to leak goals, and that’s not a good combination.”
The struggles for RSL were made up of the usual suspects of injuries and fatigue. Yura Movsisyan started the match on the bench dealing with a left heel injury that had him marked probable coming into the playoff bout. RSL returned to Salt Lake City after their loss to Seattle on Sunday then continued on to Los Angeles. That long travel time left little time for recovery.
After the 3-3 draw against the Galaxy on September 7th that marked the beginning of RSL’s slide, the team was only able to score two goals. Wednesday night didn’t go much better in that department with just the one goal on a penalty kick, but RSL did force Brian Rowe to make four saves while the only three on-target shots for LA were the three that beat Nick Rimando.
“I don’t think LA had a lot of shots tonight,” said Cassar. “I don’t feel like we were defensively poor. I don’t believe [Rimando] had a ton of saves tonight. So are we capitalizing on the opportunities that we have and in the last part of the year we didn’t.”
For RSL the season came down to a promising start and a disappointing finish, but going into the playoffs the focus was on letting those issues be part of the past and starting the season all over again. Unfortunately, the issues that hurt RSL over those final weeks cost them again on Wednesday night. Cassar said those issues cost them against the Galaxy, “without a doubt.”
“The last six, seven games we’re giving up the first goal and then we’re chasing. We’re changing our game plan because now we’re down a goal. There’s a lot of areas that we need to improve on starting with myself and we’ll address those. These last six, seven games the goal got really small for us.”
