Goal Breakdown: Grabavoy opener against San Jose focuses on opponent mistakes

Oftentimes with these goal breakdowns, we focus on the beautiful build-up, the exquisite approach, the interesting technique — so it's not often that we take a look at goals that come from capitalization on mistakes.

This goal from Ned Grabavoy involves a bit of luck, a lot of skill, and some understanding and positioning from a set piece that has helped define our improvements.

The build-up starts when Sebastian Velasquez powers in a shot that Jon Busch can only parry away for a corner; the young midfielder has never been a particularly great shooter, so this was a nice change from him. There's a lot of power behind it.

From the corner, we'll notice that Grabavoy is essentially floating around with garnering too much attention. In fact, RSL is outnumbered in the box and it doesn't look like too much will come from this one.

The initial corner is taken low and toward the near post, and while the initial take doesn't provide much in the way of success, the ball is cleared badly and falls to Luke Mulholland. With a quick-witted touch of the ball, it's back out to Velasquez.

Velasquez takes his time to send in a cross, and he beats a player very well to do so. Sebastian Jaime and Luke Mulholland are both calling for the ball and are both in good positions. Instead, Velasquez sends the ball to the far post, and a headed clearance lands somewhere in the fray. Who exactly gets a touch on that, I'm not sure, but it's a San Jose player, and it heads out of the box directly to where Grabavoy has been floating.

Grabavoy's got the ball, and he takes a low, skimming shot across the surface that somehow gets through five or six players before it hits the back of the net. I mean, what are the odds, really? It's a shot that will naturally provoke those circumstances, though — a hard, driven shot waist-high  will be both harder to get on-target and easier to get in front of — as strange as it might sound, that this one is so low defies expectations and allows for a greater opportunity.

And there we have it. Real Salt Lake scores through Ned Grabavoy. There's not a lot of intrinsic skill in this goal — just some excellent understanding and awareness.