Saturday night’s 2-0 defeat in Dallas may just have been the final nail in the coffin of Real Salt Lake’s season.
With so much on the line, RSL wasn’t particularly bad for most of the match — just not very good. Having weathered FC Dallas’ early pressure and somehow managing to keep the Hoops from scoring early on (thanks to Nick Rimando), Real would find some possession but never looked like a side that would get the upper hand.
After halftime, events began to unfold according to a similar script. Another controversial penalty against RSL. Another opportunity squandered, this time in the form of Javier Morales trying to be too tricky with a penalty kick of his own and hitting the post, then a collective failure of anyone to score in the shuffle on the rebound.
Finally, another mental lapse that was decisive in the outcome of the match. FCD managed to march the ball down the pitch after the penalty miss, taking advantage of Real’s discombobulation in the moment, and score a second goal.
All in all, it was another match that wasn’t terrible enough on its face to qualify as a dumpster fire, but bad enough to seem like one after Colorado beat Sporting Kansas City, allowing the Rapids to leapfrog over Real in the standings. RSL now sits last in the Western Conference table.
Next weekend, the team has to travel to Texas again — this time to play Houston. With Tony Beltran and Luke Mulholland unavailable due to yellow card accumulation, plus a few international call-ups with which to contend, RSL truly has its collective back to the wall.
Although Real hasn’t been officially eliminated from playoff contention at this point, it seems fairly obvious — barring an outbreak of a rare tropical disease or alien abduction that takes out the entire Seattle, San Jose, and Houston squads simultaneously — that this will be the first season in many that RSL won’t participate in the postseason.
So the playoffs seem like a distant dream at this point. What’s ahead for the organization?
There are still plenty of matches to be played, but they take on the patina of being anti-climactic from a fan perspective when there’s no playoff run to be prepared for. The CCL matches remain relevant competitively, but RSL is well-positioned in the group, and the real difficulty for MLS sides comes in the knockout stages.
Some of the players — and possibly the coaches — will literally be playing for their jobs. Real will have to do some serious business in the off-season to get the depth it needs to contend in multiple competitions next year, given how much MLS has improved as a whole.
Whether that will be enough to pacify a fan base that’s grown rather spoiled by playoff appearances remains to be seen. It’s the reality (no pun intended) that RSL has created for itself, however, and that’s down to matches like last Saturday’s — Real just hasn’t been good enough.
