“It’s just halftime” – Real Salt Lake draws with Sporting K.C. 1-1 in first leg of conference semifinals

It’s just halftime. That’s the message that coach Mike Petke gave to reporters repeatedly after the game when asked about his thoughts from the night’s match.

It’s a glass half full approach from Petke. But, in a lot of ways, he’s right. Sporting K.C. leaves Rio Tinto with a point and a very valuable away goal, but that’s it, nothing more. Which means that RSL is still very much alive heading into next Sunday’s matchup in Kansas City. There are a few scenarios in which Real can still come away victorious and head into the next round to face either Portland or Seattle in the western conference finals. First off, they can outright win. No matter how many goals are scored from either team, even if that means extra time or a penalty shootout. Secondly, they can tie at any number higher than two goals apiece. This would mean RSL advances on the away goals rule.

But, before we go too far talking about next weekend, let’s talk about Sunday’s match a little bit.

The first half really showed how organized both teams were and how fatigued RSL was after such a grueling game with LAFC on Thursday night. This led to much of the half looking like neither team could execute the attacks that they wanted and ultimately led to a stalemate, 0-0 going into halftime. Real set out to dominate possession and try to beat K.C. with good build-up play and attack in the final third of the pitch. They accomplished the first task having the ball for 66.6% of the match, but they lacked creativity to spur them on to set up good scoring attempts. For most of the first half, anytime RSL would get the ball they would make 8-9-10 passes and work their way down the field, but never anything that led to them creating space on the pitch to break through the K.C. defensive lines.

Petke addressed this in his post-game press conference when asked what led to some of the chances in the second half becoming a little more fruitful.

“It was better off-ball movement, it was quicker passes,” Petke said. “In the first half there was a lot of you know; this guy (passes), to the guy right next to him, to the guy right next to him, to the guy right next to him, which was slow”.

Petke went on to say this allowed Kansas City to “shift their lines and clog things up easily”, which stifled anything RSL wanted to do further down the pitch.

Although there was no scoring, two major things happened in the first half that will affect the next game. In the 26th-minute Rusnak went in for what looked like a clean challenge near RSL’s box to clear the ball, but this warranted a yellow card in the eyes of referee Baldomero Toledo. This means, because of yellow card accumulation, Rusnak will miss the next game in Kansas City. The other event of note was an injury that occurred in the 41st minute which resulted in Marcelo Silva being subbed out for Justen Glad. No news on Silva’s status for the next game, but with Glad playing such a key role in the regular season, I would expect he’ll get the start in this next one.

The second half saw RSL and Sporting both draw their only goals of the game. First, in the 52nd minute, a wonderful piece of interplay between Rusnak and Damir Kreilach leads to a flick off Kreilach’s head that Rusnak takes first-time and stabs the into the top of the net.

But really, my words can’t do it justice, See for yourself.

WHAT A STRIKE! 😍

Albert Rusnak’s first @Audi #MLSCupPlayoffs goal is a beauty. #RSLvSKC https://t.co/nWAY7KadN7

— Major League Soccer (@MLS) November 5, 2018

Unfortunately for RSL, the celebration was dampened when just seven minutes later Sporting capitalized on an error between keeper Nick Rimando and defender Justen Glad and was able to get a shot off on goal that blew right past Rimando. A ball that probably shouldn’t have been played back to Rimando from Glad (coach Petke even mentioned something to that affect in his post-game interview) forced Rimando to make a tough clearance as Felipe Gutierrez was closing in on him. Rimando’s kick sent the ball ricocheting off Gutierrez and fell perfectly at the feet of Diego Rubio for him to make his way towards the box and strike it.

Each team had only one or two more opportunities in the half as possession took the game back over and killed off a lot of the momentum. Each team seemed content to leave with a draw. However, Rimando did somewhat make up for his earlier mistake with two huge saves in the 73rd minute. A well-executed corner kick from K.C. forced Rimando to make two incredible diving saves and a third attempt at goal was swiftly cleared away by defender Nedum Onuoha, thus ending the attacking chance by Sporting K.C.

With the next game being played in Kansas City, and without one of their star players Albert Rusnak, I expect Real Salt Lake to take a similar approach to the game as they did when the two teams met a month ago in K.C. This game also didn’t feature Rusnak for most of it as he was subbed on in the 61st-minute, which allowed Corey Baird to get the start at striker. Baird played excellent in this game, scoring one goal and narrowly missing on another that hit the post and just bounced out of net. This game also ended in a 1-1 draw and saw RSL be much more of the aggressor, getting off 20 shots to Sporting’s eight.  RSL is by no means out of the competition, but will have to try a different approach than the one they showed on Sunday needing to score at least two goals in the next game to stay alive.

Real Salt Lake heads to Kansas City this Sunday, November 11th, to determine who moves on to the Western Conference Finals. With Seattle and Portland being played this Thursday due to scheduling conflicts with Centurylink Field, we will already know who the winner of Sunday’s matchup will face in the finals. You can catch Sunday’s game at 1:00 PM mountain time on ESPN and ESPN 700 radio.