Real Salt Lake 0 - San Jose Earthquakes 0 - Quick Match thoughts

Well RSL head coach Jason Kreis called it when he said this to the Deseret News earlier this week "The biggest thing I'm fearful of is our guys being overconfident and feeling good about themselves and feeling that they don't have to be at their best to beat San Jose, because that's not the case,"

In the post match press conference he called it "complacency" and I don't think anyone who watched the match would disagree with him.  He mentioned that several players made great individual efforts but that the team play was lacking and that would change before the next match.  If you look at the stat sheet you might think RSL played really well, they took 13 shots on the night, while San Jose had just one more, but it was the work of Nick Rimando that keep the clean sheet and allowed RSL to get their single point.  Nick made 8 dramatic saves on the night, while Jon Busch was only once forced to make a save.

To be honest part of the reason for what appeared to be a lackluster effort by RSL was the way that San Jose played, they did a great job of staying compact and clogging up the midfield which slowed down the RSL attack.  You can tell that they studied a good deal of game tape on RSL, as it appeared often they knew what RSL was going to do, before RSL did.

I am a bit concerned about the offense and how they have done with Robbie Findley, in their last 3 matches RSL have just a single goal, in the 4 matches prior to this stretch RSL had scored a dozen goals.  I can understand only getting one against a defense like LA's that has allowed just 4 goals on the season, but DC United has allowed a league worst 22 goals and San Jose had allowed 14 and both of those teams pitched shutouts against RSL.  Both of the times we failed to score we had to settle for draws, and while that keeps our unbeaten streak going and our home unbeaten streak going, there are 4 points that RSL didn't get.  That is half of the gap between RSL and the best team in MLS the LA Galaxy who have 32 points from their 13 matches.

I think when Jason was asked if he thought the World Cup might be a distraction that impacted play, he referred back to his playing days in 2006 and said that he believed it might have played a role in how the team played.  Well no excuses will be accepted next Friday night as RSL will play host to the New England Revolution, hopefully that will be part of a soccer double header with the USA playing in the quarterfinals of the World Cup.

I will try to watch the match in full on Sunday to do a more detailed breakdown of what worked and what didn't until them I am:

OFF MY SOAPBOX