This season, Javier Morales has been among the best creative forces in Major League Soccer with eight goals and 11 assists. However, in instances like Sunday when he was unavailable, Real Salt Lake has struggled this season. While the team was able to accomplish what it needed to do for much of the match on Sunday against the San Jose Earthquakes, it wasn’t until late in the match that it was able to generate much on the offensive side.
That, Head Coach Jeff Cassar said in his weekly segment on The Bill & OC Show on ESPN 700 on Tuesday, is something that falls on the whole team.
“I don’t think there’s one solution for it. I think it’s a collective effort. Everyone’s got to pick up their game just a little bit, especially with offensive ideas,” Cassar said of playing without Morales. “We have to do a better job. We have to learn to play without certain players and still be successful. At this time of the year, it’s never easy to play without one of your big, creative, offensive-minded players like Javi. We need to do a better job – I need to do a better job of finding ways – but guys really have to pick up their game.”
RSL is 1-5-2 this season in games that Morales doesn’t play. And while RSL was good on the defensive side and in possession (holding over 53% of the ball for the match), it wasn’t enough to generate more than the six shots in the match for Salt Lake.
A big portion of the credit for that goes to the Earthquakes, who brandished a physical style that proved difficult to crack at points for RSL.
“Collectively, the defensive effort was excellent. We just couldn’t get going offensively the way we wanted to, credit to San Jose for putting us on that. I think we need to deal better with the physical game than we did,” Cassar said. “But at the end of the day we still had some opportunities to take the lead. The goal was, I’d say, really unfortunate with the deflection. At the end of the day, we’ve got to keep ourselves within striking distance and three points on Sunday… can keep us within striking distance.”
Real Salt Lake returned to training on Wednesday, giving the team four days of training before Sunday’s match against the Colorado Rapids at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park. After a stretch of five matches in 16 days, seeing an open week without a midweek game is a welcome sight for Cassar and the team, particularly with five critical matches on the schedule in October.
“It will definitely be good to have 22 players in training sessions being able to do what we want to because in the last 12 days everything has been a split squad,” said Cassar, noting the importance of a victory against Colorado. “There’s no thought of getting a tie. We need three points. And to do that, we’re going to have to play good solid defense, but we’re going to have to take our chances going forward.”
To hear the full interview, click here.
