Soccer: Real Salt Lake dominates at home

Sandy » The message from Jason Kreis to his Real Salt Lake team, leading up to Saturday night's matchup against Toronto FC, was clear.

RSL could afford no more wasted chances at home. In every home match from here to the end of the season, a win would be the only acceptable result.

For Saturday night, at least, Real Salt Lake heeded the words of Kreis in one of its more balanced wins of the year.

In defeating Toronto 3-0 before 18,188 animated fans at Rio Tinto Stadium, RSL looked more like the team that handily won its first three home matches of the season, and nothing like the team that's sputtered before the home crowd in the three games since.

In its

defeat of Toronto, Real Salt Lake dominated from the opening kickoff, playing another stellar defensive match, but adding a ton of offensive chances to that defense as well. The assertiveness on both sides of the ball added up to one of Real Salt Lake's best results of the season.

"It was very important to come out of this game with three points," Kreis said. "We've put ourselves, to put it mildly, in a very inopportune spot. If you told me that we'd have 19 points in 15 matches at the beginning of the season, I would've told you that I don't think so. But here we are, so we really have to take advantage of every home match from here on out."

RSL, with the win, is still just 5-6-4 on the year. They still are in fifth place

in the Western Conference, and if the playoffs were to begin today, they'd still be on the outside looking in. But if Saturday's match, combined with the past three games, send a clue, it's that RSL may be turning the corner after that ghastly seven-match winless streak.

With the victory over Toronto, Real Salt Lake extended its unbeaten streak to four matches. Included in this is a stirring road win over the L.A. Galaxy and the 1-1 tie last week against the Houston Dynamo in a match that RSL could have won.

For Real Salt Lake, Saturday's domination appears to have been coming for a few weeks. RSL has been stingy defensively, and creating chances on offense. The difference against Toronto on Saturday is that they finished those chances.

"We've created a lot of confidence for ourselves," Midfielder Kyle Beckerman said. "We've been active, and we've been sharp. When we've had chances, we finished them, and that's something we need to continue doing."

The goals were scored by Yura Movsisyan, Beckerman, and Clint Mathis. Two of those were scored in the first half, with Movsisyan starting things off in the 21st minute when he intercepted a bad pass at midfield, took a breakaway and scored.

Beckerman, in the 44th minute, took a great pass from midfielder Javier Morales and scored just minutes after botching a golden chance. With the 2-0 lead, and with the defense limiting Toronto to just one shot on goal the entire match, the game was all but over right there.

Mathis, in the 78th minute, added the insurance goal, capping a great day for the veteran forward, who also assisted on Beckerman's goal in the first half.

"I thought we were very good and very effective tonight," Kreis said. "We got off to a slow start in the first 15 minutes. I thought that Toronto was getting to a lot of the 50-50 balls. But after that, slowly but surely, we started to get into the flow. I thought we were very, very good in the second half."

tjones@sltrib.com