Chicago 0-0 Salt Lake … the post-mortem

By: Ian Rose | May 27th, 2007

It’s a nil-nil draw, and frankly, there’s never a whole lot of good news coming out of a nil-nil draw. Real Salt Lake remains winless, with five points off of five draws, after eight games. We are technically tied with LA for last in the league, except that LA has played two fewer matches, and has a six-goal lead in differential, so there’s no getting around it – we’re just plain last. Chicago, at this point in the season, with all their problems, was a great chance to pick up that first win. They were ripe. And RSL just couldn’t reach out and take the three points. In fact, if either side deserved a win today based on offensive effort (and neither really did), it would be Chicago. There were some dangerous shots, including one in added time that almost killed us.

There are some bright points, though. First, we got a road point. When a team has as few points as RSL does, a road point is not the worst result in the world. Second, Nick Rimando showed us what he can do when he’s at his best today. He is, without any doubt, my Man of the Match for Real. Some great saves today, and more importantly to Real fans, no big mistakes. Great job today, Nick. Also, Alecko Eskandarian looked pretty good today. I won’t go so far as to say that he rekindled my hope in an explosive RSL offense anytime soon, but here’s a guy who got off the plane from Toronto on Friday. He literally has practiced once with the team, and he was out there creating things. I like Esky, and I’m glad he’s with us. He’s been through a lot this year, with all these trades and international moves, and I hope he is allowed to get comfortable in Salt Lake.

Freddy Adu is really just confusing me this season. He’s been so inconsistent. At times, he looks like he’s waking up, like he’s becoming that star we all want him to be … then he slips back into midfield anonymity. I really like that Coach Kreis is taking him off early the past few matches. On Kreis’ team, you earn your keep, and Adu has not been earning his top-ten MLS salary. I wouldn’t be surprised at all, if this continues, if Kreis benches him and starts one of the backups in his place for a game, just to try and do something to get him motivated.

In other positive news, Mehdi Ballouchy seemed to be a bit closer to his form today. He was making the sort of quiet moves, setting up his forwards, that he’s capable of at his best, and I hope this trend continues. We’ll need him to be at his best and more, especially with Adu in the doldrums.

One more note on this match. There has been a lot of bad officiating in the MLS, but I have to say that today’s game was the worst I’ve seen. Jorge Gonzalez botched probably ten straight-forward calls, against both sides. The best thing I can say about his performance today is that I don’t think he specifically favored either side – his calls were terrible, but at least they were applied evenly on both teams. After all, to be biased, you have to pay some attention to the game. The calls seemed random – there was no rhyme or reason to what fouls he called, or what fouls were serious enough to be cards. Frankly, Chicago got the worst of the mistakes, in that they lost what seemed to be a penalty late in the first half. But, regardless of who it hurts, officiating like this hurts the league and the sport’s development in the US. It was truly awful.