Real Salt Lake’s slow starts finally caught up with them. Quite vengefully.
RSL’s unbeaten streak came to an abrupt end on Saturday night thanks to the LA Galaxy, who were well-prepared and capitalized on Real’s weaknesses to put five goals up on RSL yet again at the StubHub Center. Real had been able to get away with playing somewhat poorly during the first half of its recent home matches, but this time, the first 45 minutes proved decisive to the outcome.
Both teams were missing key attacking players, but that didn’t seem to matter early on, especially for the Galaxy. It was a wild start to the match as LA earned a penalty kick in the sixth minute. Nick Rimando saved Steven Gerrard’s effort — it was the highlight of Rimando’s 400th MLS appearance — and when Burrito Martinez scored 10 minutes later (after the Galaxy had hit the woodwork in between), it seemed like it might be an auspicious night for Rimando and his teammates.
Or not.
Martinez was forced to come off only 22 minutes in, with the ranks so thinned that Demar Phillips ended up replacing him. Phillips typically plays left back for RSL, but his speed and prior experience as an attacking player made him a viable option given the amount of time remaining in the match.
However, with no real playmaker on the field after Martinez’s departure (Javier Morales was on the bench and Joao Plata was unavailable through injury), Real’s attack inevitably suffered and failed to keep the pressure off the defense. Things started to get wobbly for RSL, and then LA simply took the game over, scoring a pair of goals in quick succession in the middle of the first half, then adding two more just before halftime.
The Galaxy used several approaches to break Real down. One was to hit their left flank often, looking to exploit the holes in RSL’s formation as Tony Beltran pushed up higher trying to support the attack. LA would also go straight down the middle with some success as well, taking advantage of a center back pairing of Aaron Maund and Jamison Olave that was a little rusty.
Moreover, the offfside trap was not working for Real — the defense kept looking for calls that weren’t there and got burned several times. RSL’s midfield was completely discombobulated in terms of tracking runners — a surprising development considering that Kyle Beckerman, Luke Mulholland, and John Stertzer were the three starters — and the chaos just piled on.
RSL could have actually done better at hitting LA on the counterattack if they had moved the ball more quickly when the numbers were in their favor. It made sense to a certain extent that Real would want to slow the pace down, as the Galaxy’s speed was brutalizing the RSL defense, but opportunities were there, and the players either weren’t seeing them or couldn’t execute the plays to capitalize on them.
Cassar did make a key change at halftime, bringing Morales on for Stertzer, which seemed to give RSL more confidence. It was a necessary move, despite the fact that Morales hadn’t played a full half since returning from a rib injury — without Plata or Martinez, Real simply couldn’t generate enough on the attack to alleviate the pressure on the defense.
The damage had largely been done, though. Although RSL did manage to pull a goal back — Yura Movsisyan earned a penalty kick that Morales converted — there simply was no coming back from such a huge deficit.
LA killed the match off with a Steven Gerrard goal that came off the back of some sloppy, unnecessary play in the Real midfield. It was another reminder that the Galaxy were all too happy to pressure, force the tempo, and run right past a bewildered RSL side.
With just one home match remaining before the long road trip forced onto the team by the Rio Tinto field replacement, Real clearly has some work to do. Early-match strength, tactical discipline, and managing speed of play all need to be improved upon as RSL looks to put another bad loss to LA behind them.
