This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
About halftime through RSL's 3-0 loss at Vancouver last night, midfielder Will Johnson — away on international duty with Canada — tweeted that he was "sick to his stomach" to see what had happened to his team at B.C. Place.He wasn't the only one.
Coach Jason Kreis watched from a radio booth while suffering from food poisoning as a controversial first-half red card put RSL down both a man and a goal. His the team never recovered, suffering its fourth straight loss — the first time that has happened in more than four years.Goalkeeper Nick Rimando has watched 12 goals find the net behind him in that span, and like his teammates blamed another "silly foul" for allowing the Whitecaps to take a free kick that led to the red card on midfielder Collen Warner just before halftime."We should be smarter," he said. "We are smarter players. We're just tuning off at the wrong time. Certain players that we need to step up aren't stepping up, and I think this is a little bit of a gut check. You want to be as positive as you can, but when you let in 13, 14 goals in four games, there's nothing positive about that."Rimando said the team still has "time to get it right," with two regular-season games left before the playoffs, but needs to get back the fleet of players who have been missing for various reasons — mostly international duty."The last four games or so, we've kind of realized we're not so deep, we're not so good, we're not the best team in this league," Rimando said. "And we're looking ourselves in the mirror right now. You lose four games in a row, it's definitely not good. It's not positive."