Real Salt Lake manager Jason Kreis was critical of his defence after the defeat against San Jose earthquakes. The club were coming into the match with an opportunity to go top of the table and to also forget the memories of the 2-0 defeat against Seattle Sounders last week. However, they suffered a 2-1 defeat against San Jose to remain two points behind Seattle Sounders. This is a major blow to their title aspirations because Seattle Sounders have two matches in hand and could potentially increase the gap to eight points with those matches.
Kreis was critical of the marking done by his players for the set pieces against San Jose. Set pieces were the undoing for his players after the opposition took advantage by scoring crucial goals. Lenhart opened the scoring after just 18 minutes on the clock, but Real Salt Lake did not take long to equalise things. Morales went straight down the other end and scored for the home team. The match was about to take an even bigger turn just a few minutes later because Lenhart scored his second goal of the evening two minutes later. Hence, all the three goals in the match were scored in a space of five minutes.
“It’s just individual plays. It’s about whether or not you’re going to make a play against your mark. It’s about whether you’re going to be physically outmuscled by the forward that you’re marking, or whether you’re going to take that extra half a second to nap. That means he gets behind you, and he’s going to have a chance. For me, we can work on it in training all we want, but in the game it just comes down to focus and commitment,” said Kreis, whose team will be facing Vancouver Whitecaps in the next league match.