Real Salt Lake win 1-0 season opener against San Jose Earthquakes
Real Salt Lake has won their 2011 Major League Soccer season opener with 1-0 against the San Jose Earthquakes on Saturday night at the Buck Shaw Stadium. The skipper Kyle Beckerman had it done on an assist from Javier Morales and led his team to earn
all important three points against the home side.
It was rainy night with strong windy conditions which had made it very difficult for the players to clear the ball and for getting pace with it. The RSL players in particular were finding it rather difficult to get on with the game, as many of them
were consistently losing their feet due to a slippery field. However, the Earthquakes were able to find a better way to deal with the stormy conditions. They were dominating the possession for a better part of the first half and were producing more goal scoring
chances.
“It was crazy. The wind was nuts, the rain was coming at us from all angles and it just seemed to get worse as the night went on,” RSL captain Beckerman said.
Despite of a 4-3-3 formation during the whole preseason, the Earthquakes were on field with their typical regular season strategy of 4-4-2 formation. Ryan Johnson and Chris Wondolowski were assigned the offensive job up-front. Wondolowski had almost
put the Earthquakes on board when headed one from the six yard box on a spectacular cross from Chris Leitch. But he could saw his effort going wide of the goal post.
However, the RSL soon found a way to cope with those miserable conditions as they started to test the San Jose goal-keeper Jon Busch with some long range shots. As, it was hard for goal-keepers to anticipate the ball route because of the wind and stiff
movements due to wet surface made it even tougher. Busch best safe was in the 62nd minute, when he had stopped a ball with his right hand which was aimed on target by the midfielder Ned Grabavoy. Despite of a solid resilience from the
Busch, this strategy paid-off for the RSL when the skipper Beckerman had netted a ball in the 65th minute.
Though, Beckerman was the only goal scorer of the game but still he could not grab the man of the match award from his goal-keeper Nick Rimando. Nick was simply impressive, as he made eight saves in this game including two point-blank opportunities
in the first half. He was able to deny the 2010 Golden Boot winner Wondolowski and forward Khari Stephen on a number of occasions.
“Nick is a calm character, he has seen so many things that there was not much out there that troubles him,” head coach Jason Kreis said.
This defeat is very much the replication of what was happened between the two opponents in the last season opener, where the RSL had it won with quite a similar 1-0 score.
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