Real Salt Lake vs. San Jose Earthquakes preview: A clash of good preseason form

RSL started their preseason off with a bang, beating the New York Red Bulls 1-0 thanks to a Jordan Allen header. They’ll look to keep that form going into their next match against the San Jose Earthquakes.

Trying to predict lineups

Predicting a lineup in preseason is extremely tricky, especially when coaches like to rotate the entire squad between halves. We can certainly go off of what we saw in the last game against New York and what we’ve learned since then, which will be a great starting point.

We know that we’ll be missing a few players due to international call-ups — Justen Glad, Danny Acosta, Sebastian Saucedo, and Brooks Lennon were all named to the US U-20 camp ahead of the CONCACAF U-20 Championship tournament. We know that they’ll be gone at least until February 10, and if they all make the 20-man roster to play in the tournament, we won’t see any of those players back before the first game of the regular season.

Also missing from our roster will be midfielder Omar Holness, as he’s been called up for Jamaica’s friendly game against the US Men’s National Team. Nick Rimando, of course, is still out with the USMNT as well.

Aside from those players who will be absent, we can expect to see a healthy rotation of the rest of the squad like we saw against New York, which included appearances from a few Monarchs players and RSL’s new draft picks.

On the Earthquakes side, David Bingham is out with the USMNT so we’ll expect to see second-year ‘keeper Andrew Tarbell start out the game. They’ve also had a regular rotation of rostered players and trialist/academy players through their first couple games as well.

Newly-acquired Olmes Garcia played in both of San Jose’s preseason outings so far and even snagged himself a goal against the ‘Quakes U-18 Academy.

Preseason form so far

Not that preseason results matter much, but San Jose is 2-0 so far in the preseason campaign, with a 3-0 against their own U-18 Academy and a 1-0 win over Sporting Kansas City. Chris Wondolowski, returning from the USMNT January camp following Bruce Arena’s 23-man roster announcement, is back with the team and will most likely make an appearance as he gears up for regular season play.

We’ve only had just a taste of what RSL is looking like so far, but from what we’ve seen, the players look hungry and excited to be back out on the field. With a 1-0-1 record so far, the Salt Lake veterans and youngsters will look to improve to 2-0-1 with a win over their Western Conference opponents.

Jordan Allen continues to make his case to take over a starting role this season as he knocked in a beautiful header off a cross from Ricardo Velazco against New York.

Upcoming schedules

Kickoff is set for 11:00am MT and will be RSL’s last game in Tucson before they head to participate in the Portland Timbers Preseason Tournament. They’ll kick that leg off with a game against the Timbers themselves next Thursday, February 9th.

San Jose will stay in Tucson for one more game against the Seattle Sounders on February 7th, after which they’ll travel to Las Vegas to take on the LA Galaxy.