By Ambrosia Tonkovich // @heyambrosia
Saturday, April 29: 3-0 Loss
Well, I don’t know where to start. For the first time in eight matches against Sporting Kansas City, we finally lost to them. With 7 yellow cards between the two teams, the game ended in the 96th minute with a 3-0 lead from SKC.
With both Kyle Beckerman and Nick Rimando out on injury, I want to say it started off promising for Real Salt Lake fans, but I’ll be honest, it didn’t look that great from the beginning. SKC scored their first goal in the 17th minute (Benny Feilhaber) and boy was it pretty. I have to give credit where credit is due, I know I would’ve been proud if RSL had scored a goal that looked so good, so I couldn’t even be mad when that happened.
After this goal, we started to gain a little bit more possession, with Joao Plata making sure to send in anything he could, and Yura Movsisyan almost making a shot that deflected off of Plata in the 29th minute. After a quick discussion, referees made the decision that Plata was in an offsides position and the goal didn’t count. The noise that came out of my mouth during that time was… something inhuman. I laughed at the whole thing, but it was understandable. But man it would’ve been nice to at least have one goal.
We still continued our theme of incomplete passes during the rest of the second half and finished the 45th with a 1.0 lead from SKC and a sad, but hopeful halftime gave me time to grieve.
Alas, our second half started off quick for SKC, they gained their second goal in the 52nd minute, courtesy of Dom Dwyer. Soon after that, Movsisyan signaled that he needed to be taken off at the 60th minute due to an injury, and Coach Mike Petke was forced to sub him out but brought in Luis Silva up front for the attack.
At the 90th minute they announced 5 minutes of stoppage time, and I groaned, but hoped that it would go quick. I was wrong. Right toward the end of stoppage, Gerso Fernandez was able to run past Matt Van Oekel who went out to get the ball but missed. There it was, 3-0 and just at the end of stoppage time. As soon as the whistle rang I turned off the TV.
Am I disappointed? Sure. There have been numerous players who have all agreed, everyone needs to step up. However, I continue to stick by our team during these growing pains with new players and 11 players of ours out on injury (the most in the league). Hopefully, we continue some conditional training to keep our current players around and out of injury trouble.
Match Events:
(SKC) 17′ Goal Benny Feilhaber 1-0
(RSL) 39′ Yellow Card Luke Mulholland
(SKC) 49′ Yellow Card Benny Feilhaber
(SKC) 51′ Goal Dominic Dwyer 2-0
(RSL) 51′ Yellow Card Demar Phillips
(SKC) 55′ Yellow Card R. Espinoza
(RSL) 55′ Yellow Card Yura Movsisyan
(RSL) 60′ Substitution: Out: Yura Movsisyan In: Luis Silva
(SKC) 69′ Yellow Card Graham Zusi
(SKC) 70′ Substitution: Out: R. Espinoza In: Sony Mustivar
(RSL) 71′ Substitution: Out: Danilo Acosta In S. Saucedo
(SKC) 79′ Substitution: Out J. Medranda In Daniel Salloi
(SKC) 84′ Yellow Card Gerso Fernandes
(RSL) 85′ Substitution: Out: Luke Mulholland In: José María Hernández
(SKC) 90′ + 1′ Substitution: Out: Dominic Dwyer In: Soony Saad
(SKC) 90′ + 5′ Goal Gerso Fernandes 3-0
Featured image courtesy: @RealSaltLake
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