An up and down 2015 season for Real Salt Lake continued Saturday night as the Claret and Cobalt surrendered the lead twice in a 2-2 draw with the Columbus Crew at home in Rio Tinto Stadium.
While the creating chances and scoring goals has become a bit more consistent in recent weeks, another trend seems to be rearing its ugly head quite often for RSL- the employment of red card-worthy challenges. In the past two matches against NYRB and Columbus, RSL has had three separate players sent off with others in danger of a similar fate.
First, Javier Morales was given his marching orders in the 40th minute of a Wednesday night clash at Red Bull Arena for tackling Felipe Martins as he was heading towards goal with (apparently) no more defenders to impede his run. RSL fans will argue that winger Tony Beltran was there to defend Martins but that’s an argument for another time.
Later, in the 54th minute, RSL defender Demar Phillips was also sent to the locker room early for a rough challenge on the Red Bull’s Connor Lade. A nine-man RSL was able to hold their own against the Red Bulls with the two man advantage, but it wasn’t enough as a 4th minute goal for New York gave the Red Bulls a much needed 1-0 victory at home.
Moving on to Saturday, RSL youngster Jordan Allen was sent off in the 77th minute for a dangerous and unnecessary studs up tackle on Columbus’ Tony Tchiani.
Also, RSL forward Devon Sandoval was lucky he didn’t get a piece of Michael Parkhurst on his yellow-worthy challenge in the 70th minute or he too would have seen a straight red.
Altogether RSL has amassed six red cards in their 18 MLS matches in 2015. Now I’m no math expert, but that’s roughly one red card for every three matches RSL plays, and that is far too many for a young team that will be challenged heavily the next month without the likes of Nick Rimando, Kyle Beckerman, Alvaro Saborio, Elias Vasquez and Demar Phillips who have all been called in by their respective national teams for the upcoming CONCACAF Gold Cup.
At the rate they are going, RSL would eventually tie the all-time MLS record for red cards in a single season set by the 2000 New York Metro Stars who finished with 11 reds on the season. And while New York was still able to win the MLS Eastern Division, they did so with players like Tim Howard, Clint Mathis, Mike Petke and Adolfo Valencia; a bit of a different roster than RSL has at their disposal.
Perhaps the most disparaging thing about this string of red cards is that most of them are coming from undisciplined plays or challenges. Three of the six red cards alone have come from young players (Sebastian Saucedo, Demar Phillips and Jordan Allen) employing very dangerous two-legged, studs-up challenges that usually happen after the ball is gone.
I don’t know if these players were getting away with challenges like that in academy games or in other countries, but they need to learn that MLS is starting to really throw the book at players with tendencies to make those kinds of challenges. That all starts with head coach Jeff Cassar rallying his youngsters together and putting an end to those challenges by teaching proper technique and field positioning so that they won’t be caught in a situation where they feel the need to perform such a challenge.
With five starters now out of the lineup because of international duty, RSL will have to rely on their young bench players to play at an extremely high level if they are going to survive the dog days of summer and put themselves in position to make a run at a Western Conference playoff spot. Cassar is going to have a hard enough time filling out a lineup and dressing 18 players for every game, it’s up to those young players to not make his job even more difficult.
Many of these RSL youngsters will be on display Wednesday night as the claret and cobalt take on their northwestern rival Portland Timbers in a U.S. Open Cup clash at Rio Tinto Stadium. Kickoff is at 8:00 p.m. MST.
Photo by Shaun Clark/Getty Images
