This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Nothing easy.
Nothing at all.
That was Real Salt Lake's first two months of the 2017 MLS season, now in the books after the 3-0 loss at rival Sporting Kansas City on Saturday night.
What will month No. 3 bring?
Stay tuned in May.
The first two were filled with it all. A sudden coaching change, struggles to score, struggles to defend and, above all, an ongoing struggle to stay healthy.
RSL sits at 2-5-2, riding back-to-back losses after piecing together two wins in the first two matches of the Mike Petke era. The rash of injuries continues, too. Which makes the start to the season all that much more difficult to analyze. RSL was without goalkeeper Nick Rimando (hamstring) and captain Kyle Beckerman (calf) against Sporting KC.
RSL has had 12 first-team players miss at least one game due to injury. As many as 10 of those players were considered starters at one point in the preseason or since the start of the beginning of the season in March.
"We've got to look at ourselves in the mirror and accept the fact that every game that we're going to play is going to be such a grind and effort," midfielder Luke Mulholland said on the postgame broadcast Saturday evening.
Down so many players relied on to produce, RSL has had to play and learn on the fly, plugging in new pieces all over the lineup. Defender Justen Glad still has yet to play a game since suffering a knee injury with the U.S. U-20 national team last month. Joao Plata now has started back-to-back matches, going 90 minutes in both, but the Ecuadorian forward has yet to come close to reaching his level of effectiveness shown a year ago.
Then toss in the absences of right back Tony Beltran, midfielder Jordan Allen, offseason depth signings Chad Barrett and David Horst, and RSL's running list of injured becomes more and more daunting. The injury report grows each week while fans pray for it to shrink.
"We're not feeling sorry for ourselves," Mulholland said.
Veteran Chris Wingert, pressed into action all over the back line due to injury, echoed Mulholland after the loss in Kansas City.
"You have to bring everything you have when your name's called, and you can't worry about what the lineup's going to be," Wingert said. "I think one of the good things about our team this year heading into the season was that we had a lot of depth and then unfortunately we've lost some of that due to injury. But again, that's just part of the game, part of a long season. So as an individual that's not something that you can worry about."
RSL might not be feeling sorry for itself and is attempting to block out the idea of so many key players sidelined, but how long can the club tread water in the Western Conference?
The slate doesn't ease up, either. RSL returns home to face the last undefeated team in the league in FC Dallas (4-0-3), a night guaranteed to be brimming with emotion as club legend Javier Morales returns for the first time since his controversial exit this offseason.
After that? Back-to-back road trips to New England and Seattle. Two road matches on artificial turf. RSL hasn't won a game on turf since November 2013 and is 0-12-5 in its last 17 matches playing on an artificial surface.
So as Petke explained during his own postgame interview, immediate success won't happen overnight. There will be no waving of a magic wand. He told his players exactly that in the locker room after the 3-0 loss.
"It's a mountain to climb," he said.
Twitter: @chriskamrani —
FC Dallas at Real Salt Lake
P Saturday, 7:30 p.m.
TV • KMYU