Real Salt Lake has an opportunity to finish the preseason strong and lift a trophy on Saturday when it faces the Colorado Rapids in the final of the 2015 Desert Diamond Cup in Tucson, Arizona.
RSL earned three victories in three matches to reach the final while Colorado went 1-0-2, needing a late goal against FC Tucson on Wednesday to finish with a 1-0 win over the tournament hosts for its lone victory. Now with a 7 p.m. MT kickoff in the championship match on Saturday, the Claret-and-Cobalt have one last chance to continue the progress of training camp and cap it off on a positive note as it prepares for the first match of the regular season on March 7 against the Portland Timbers.
“We’ve gotten good results so far this tournament and we’re in the final, but really it’s not about that. It’s about making sure we’re progressing each time we step on the field. For the most part, I think we’ve done that,” RSL Head Coach Jeff Cassar said after the final training session on Friday. “We’re heading in the right direction. We’ve done a lot of good things. These games have also shown us what we need to work on and we want to get the guys a good 90-minute run, come out of the game healthy and then really start to prepare for Portland.”
There is just 90 minutes left in preseason and the club has shown many of the elements that have pushed RSL to the playoffs for seven consecutive seasons, with a stingy defense and good control of possession. They have also played great in the attacking third in stretches, but additional sharpness could elevate their level even further.
A big part of that has come in the transition to a 4-3-3 formation, which has often also looked like a 4-2-3-1 depending on the semantics of positioning. That evolution in camp has meant a slowly changing personality on the field when it comes to reacting to certain situations. The execution has sometimes been mixed, even if the results point to success for Real Salt Lake.
“We’ve been successful at times and unsuccessful at times. But the positive thing is that we’ve played some really attractive attacking soccer at times,” Cassar said. “Now it’s doing that for longer stretches and making sure that when we’re not playing offense as well as we want to, that we’re still playing defense extremely well.”
After the match on Saturday, the team will return to Utah on Sunday and enter the first week of regular season preparation with a match looming against the Timbers on the road on March 7.
Watch the Desert Diamond Cup final live on RealSaltLake.com beginning at 7 p.m.
