RSL gonna win the whole thing: A knee-jerk reaction

We’ll get to that title in just a second.

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1. 3 years ago Real Salt Lake went through a bit of turnover rather suddenly. I remember sitting with a bunch of friends talking about how scary it was going to be for us without Fabian Espindola up top and Jamison Olave on the back line.

There was a little less concern with the back 4 because of Chris Schuler — who we had become pretty confident in despite his injuries. The forward position, however, was a giant question mark. Garth Lagerway, General Manager at the time, had said very little about what the approach would be to replace Fabi.

What little he had said was very ambiguous, as per the ususal. What we had heard was that there was a young forward coming out of South America that would blow all of our proverbial socks off.

Fast forward to about a month ago.

Olmes Garcia, up until a month ago, had left our socks entirely alone. I think if you asked most fans before this little run they would have said that they were disappointed with what most of us hoped would be a “game changer” of a player. I’m still scratching my head a bit about the fact that it’s been as simple as slotting “Golmes” into the middle to see what he is really made of.

We’re learning a lot about this young player, and there’s obviously a lot of untapped potential there. More on Olmes to come later this week, but he might just turn out to be the truth after all.

2. Nick Rimando is the Greatest of All Time. We already knew this. I just really wanted to type it out. I saw someone say “if Nick Rimando were 6 inches taller he’d be one of the greatest keepers in Europe, no question,” a couple days ago and I have to (with all my homer-ness) agree. I will add that I am really glad that he’s not that tall and that he plays for us and is a part of our community.

3. RSL gonna win the whole thing

Hey, it’s a knee jerk reaction. I’m allowed. Throughout the entire match tonight things just felt...different — and in a really good way. I’ve been trying to put my finger on it since the PHI game and I’m still not 100% what the driver here is, but I like it. There’s a combination of a lot of things I feel, but we’re really starting to find answers for a lot of the question marks I had going into the summer break.

Are there still questions? Absolutely. Are we going to mow through the competition over the next month or so on our way to the cup? I hope so, but we’ll probably just chip away here and there and then do some damage in the playoffs similar to 2009. I’m a generally optimistic person so take this for what it is, but there’s something really good happening right now at Real Salt Lake and we as fans need to get behind it.

We need to continue to demand that this team perform at this level and that they show us what it is to believe. They need to show us that THEY believe. Tonight they believed. They showed up to play against a team that we would normally find a way to lose to. You know what I’m talking about.

Up 2-0 there were several moments where players impressed me with their defensive work rates (Burrito specifically) and aggression in the attacking third. That’s grit, and it’s exactly what we need going forward.