SALT LAKE CITY — Real Salt Lake is marching on to the knockout round of the MLS is Back Tournament, but not exactly emphatically.
RSL went scoreless for the second straight game on Wednesday morning in Orlando, falling to Sporting Kansas City 2-0 in the Group D finale.
RSL conceded a goal just 51 seconds into the match, and then again late in the match to finish group play with a 1-1-1 record.
Even before Wednesday’s match though, RSL was guaranteed a spot in the knockout round as at minimum a top third-place finisher — and unless Minnesota loses to Colorado by three goals on Wednesday night that’s exactly how it will qualify. Its opponent won’t be determined until after the final group games on Thursday night, but it will likely either be Orlando or Kansas City.
Wednesday’s loss was all about the poor start, and then a lack of quality in the final third.
Kansas City earned a corner kick in the opening minute of the game, and RSL failed to clear the initial corner or the second and third ball, and Johnny Russell capitalized on the missed clearances, banging in the opening goal just 51 seconds into the match.
“You can point your finger at this and that, but at the end of the day it’s about alertness and when that ball is in the box you’ve got to make sure you’re the first to the ball. Scrambles like that happen and it’s just about making sure you get a toe in and clearing it out and unfortunately we didn’t do that,” said RSL defender Justen Glad.
“We definitely could’ve passed a second, third, fourth pass little bit more often that way we can really made them shift, we kind of started rushing.” — RSL coach Freddy Juarez
RSL’s first two group games were played at 10:30 p.m. local time, but Wednesday’s game was played at 9 a.m. It’s hard to know if the early start time contributed to the early goal, but either way it certainly wasn’t the start Freddy Juarez’s team was looking for.
“Total responsibility for that first goal, I didn’t have the guys ready coming out of the locker room and into the beginning of the game. I think after that we found the rhythm of the game we started finding the pockets that we talked about in pregame, we got some chances where we get into the box,” said Juarez.
After settling into the match, RSL started to bypass Kansas City’s pressure more easily and pushed the ball into the attacking half. From there, the attack mostly stalled.
Real Salt Lake enjoyed a 58%-42% edge in possession, but was outshot 10-5 — and it only created two shots in the second half when it was obviously trying to chase the game.
“We definitely could’ve passed a second, third, fourth pass little bit more often that way we can really made them shift, we kind of started rushing,” said Juarez.
Kansas City’s Gerso tacked on an insurance goal for his side in the 86th minute as he created some space around Donny Toia at the edge of the penalty area and curled a left-footed shot around Zac MacMath.
Sam Johnson, Justin Meram and Erik Holt all made their first starts of the MLS is Back Tournament as Juarez continued a mild rotation of players. Johnson’s involvement as a striker was very minimal with just a handful of touches in the first half before he was placed by Douglas Martinez at halftime.
Juarez eventually proceeded to add Maikel Chang, Pablo Ruiz, Giuseppe Rossi and Jeizon Ramirez to the game to try and chase the elusive goal but it wasn’t really ever close to coming.
“It’s the hardest part of the game, there’s less space, there’s less time and also there’s fatigue going on,” said Juarez. “We always want to create more chances, we’re going to continue to work on trying to create more chances and then getting players into positions to look at goal.”
Albert Rusnak didn’t dress for the match after being subbed off with a hip injury in last weekend’s scoreless draw against Minnesota.