Sandy • From a competitive standpoint, Real Salt Lake’s performances in the Leagues Cup have been night and day.
They trounced the Seattle Sounders, their Major League Soccer rivals, 3-0 on Saturday. But on Wednesday they fell behind early to Liga MX’s Monterrey and couldn’t recover.
RSL has come back from deficits multiple times this season. But against Monterrey, the opportunities they got garnered no goals and Salt Lake lost 3-0.
For coach Pablo Mastroeni, it’s all part of the process.
“It stops your world a little bit,” Mastroeni said. “You’re in a good run of form there, you’re super confident and you run into a 3-nil defeat. Obviously, there’s going to be reflection, which I think is important in the process.”
Salt Lake’s reflection comes during a competition that plenty of fans think a Liga MX team should win by default because the Mexican league is considered a cut above MLS. Monterrey may have proved that latter idea right Wednesday with how sharp it looked against an RSL team that hadn’t lost a game in months. That’s not all that surprising when considering Monterrey had the best record in its league last season.
Mastroeni said although RSL lost, the team’s performance was mostly good. They created plenty of chances (three shots on goal) but just couldn’t finish. Of the three goals Salt Lake conceded, one was an own goal by defender Justen Glad.
“Moments cost us today,” Mastroeni said.
Those moments came mostly off of defensive mistakes by RSL. But simultaneously, they came from the type of team RSL — or any MLS team for that matter — rarely sees. Monterrey was sharp in passing, speedy with counters, dangerous in front of goal.
“Those are the details that, maybe in an MLS game, they don’t score those goals,” Mastroeni said. “But at that level, with the players they had on the field, it was something that we haven’t seen — that rhythm they played with when they made those passes and when they countered us.”
If RSL had won, tied or lost by two goals or less, it would’ve automatically been headed to the knockout round of the MLS-Liga MX tournament. But now they have to pay attention to the game between Monterrey and the Sounders on Sunday.
RSL’s loss, however, might amount to nothing. The team can still advance to the knockout stage of the Leagues Cup based on goal differential. So the only real consequence is having to start another unbeaten streak, which stood at 11 matches — including U.S. Open Cup and MLS play — before Wednesday night.
The loss also marked the first time in seven games that RSL failed to score a single goal.
“We take it on the chin, we move on and hopefully we keep playing like we have been,” defender Justen Glad said.
Mastroeni said when a team is playing well, it can be difficult to “stay dialed into the little moments.” And it didn’t seem like he was too worried about how the loss to Monterrey would affect the group going forward.
“It’s never perfect,” Mastroeni said. “I think this comes at a good time where we can take a couple days off and get away, but come back and have a purpose of our work moving forward to make sure that we tidy up these areas.”
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