Real Salt Lake hope to cash in on second chance
Claret-and-Cobalt believe last year's experience will be beneficial
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"The experience of being in the final last year and having the disappointment I think, I'm hopeful, is going to help us Saturday night," he said.
A year ago, RSL played host to the Western Conference final at Rio Tinto Stadium, but suffered a heartbreaking 1-0 loss to a New York Red Bulls team that made the playoffs on the final day of the regular season.
This year, it's Real Salt Lake that was a late entry into the MLS Cup Playoffs and will have to hit the road to take on the Chicago Fire in the Eastern Conference Championship Saturday night at Toyota Park.
"Obviously it's a different situation, we're playing away, we're playing against a team that is in fantastic form and we're playing in front of a hostile crowd," Kreis said. "We're going to have to take care of the details, but at the end of the day the simple truth is we need to score goals to win, don't we?"
That they do, and they have, beating the defending MLS Cup champion and Supporters' Shield winners Columbus Crew in both legs of the Eastern Conference Semifinal Series.
When it was over and RSL had shocked the Crew, the on-field celebration at Crew Stadium was somewhat muted.
"If you looked at our celebration after the game against Columbus, we weren't running on the field or jumping up for joy," veteran midfielder Andy Williams said. "We did that last year and went to the conference final and came up short. Everybody is pretty much focused on what's going to happen this weekend and once we get that win we can celebrate and then start focusing on the MLS Cup next week."
Williams knows that Chicago will present a different, and perhaps more difficult, challenge Saturday night, especially in the attacking third.
"I would say they have a lot more attacking options and firepower than the Crew," Williams said. "Chris Rolfe is a good goal scorer, [Brian] McBride and then you have someone like [Cuauhtémoc] Blanco feeding those guys the ball and creating chances for them, it's a deadly combination."
Like last week, Real Salt Lake left Utah early to prepare for Saturday night's game. The team left Wednesday afternoon and will train Thursday and Friday in Chicago.
"The guys get away from everything else and they're together in a group environment in a chance to bond a little bit more," Kreis said when asked about the advantage to traveling early. "When I look back at some of our best times and some of our most consistent play this year, it was actually in the later parts of preseason and I think it may have something to do with the fact we had our group together."
While he called his team's play during large portions of the regular season "maddeningly inconsistent," Kreis said Real Salt Lake is playing some of its best soccer of the season of late.
"What we have shown this year is that when we're good, we're very, very good," Kreis said. "Over the past three, four, five games, we've been just that -- very, very good. We've been extremely competitive, good on both sides of the ball. We feel like we deserve to be where we're at."
Dylan Butler is a contributor to MLSnet.com.
