This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Sandy • Looking ahead on Wednesday as Real Salt Lake's players and staffers prepared for the offseason, defender Tony Beltran summed up what awaits the only club he's ever played for as a professional.
"Change is inevitable," said RSL's 29-year-old right back, "and change in sports when you don't win is absolute."
The offseason descended upon RSL last week after a 3-1 first-round playoff loss at the L.A. Galaxy put the exclamation point on a poor finish during the final two months of the season. A week later, the sting remains. And Beltran, who has been a cog in the club's run of eight postseason appearances in nine years, identified a theme.
"For whatever reason this is almost starting to become a trend for RSL — the kind of last third of the year where we seem to hit a little bit of a lull," Beltran said. "It was really exemplified in this season, obviously, [during] the last eight games. It's something we need to identify and obviously fix because it kept us out of a prime playoff positions."
Despite ending the regular season with a seven-game winless streak, the franchise snuck into the postseason after missing out on the playoffs in 2015. But even a fresh start couldn't fix what was obvious.
"I just felt we didn't have it [at the end]," said veteran goalkeeper Nick Rimando. "Other teams had that quality and that fight that we didn't have, which is disappointing because I felt like we had a team to move on and to create some noise in the playoffs."
Forward Yura Movsisyan said the ending was surreal. To the striker, who returned to RSL in 2016 after seven seasons overseas, it took some time to realize that 10 months of a work was over in a 90-minute midweek flash.
"You can't get hot in the playoffs," Movsisyan said. "You gotta get hot right before the playoffs."
With such a quick playoff ouster, will there be an overhaul before the start of 2017? In 2012, RSL parted ways with veterans Will Johnson, Jamison Olave and Fabian Espindola. In 2014, Nat Borchers, Ned Grabavoy and Chris Wingert moved on.
"There's a healthy foundation in the team, and I think the staff is going to be going out and looking for players that can look to make an immediate impact to the team," said RSL captain Kyle Beckerman. "There will be some turnover, but I think that it's going to be some little pieces more than a huge overhaul like [2014]."
The question that has been repeatedly asked over the past two months got an honest answer from Movsisyan. At what point did RSL's 2016 campaign start to splinter apart? The striker pinpointed the 1-0 home loss on Sept. 17 to Houston, the worst team in the West — RSL's only home loss of the season.
"I would say the main thing was just confidence," Movsisyan said. "Again, I put my hand up first and say that was partly my fault that I couldn't motivate the rest of the guys and the rest of the older players or the more experienced players that we couldn't pick up the team."
Twitter: @chriskamrani —
Offseason-bound
RSL by the numbers during 2016:
Record • 12-12-10, sixth place in Western Conference
Goals scored • 44
Goals allowed • 46
Home record • 8-1-8
Away record • 4-11-2
Ugly ending • RSL went eight-straight games without a win, and scored just six goals in their last eight games