Real Salt Lake travels to LAFC for midweek match where both teams need result

(Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News)


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SANDY — Real Salt Lake head coach Mike Petke was hardly in the mood to look ahead Saturday after the club’s disappointing 1-1 draw against Montreal at home last weekend.

But he was eager to prove his team can play better than it did.

The only problem? Now they have to do it on the road, where Salt Lake is 1-8-2 on the year.

“Yeah, it’s a little frustrating,” said Petke, whose club is also 9-1-3 at home. “Teams, to their credit, come in doing a good job of getting behind the ball and looking to counterattack.

“(Saturday), we had numerous opportunities to put them away, and we just couldn’t find that one.”

The next step is a doozy, though, when Real Salt Lake (10-9-5, 35 points) travels to face LAFC at Banc of California Stadium in a game that will be broadcast on ESPN2.

Los Angeles FC (10-7-6, 36 points) is coming in off back-to-back losses following Saturday night’s 2-0 defeat to Sporting Kansas City. The game was the club’s third defeat in four games, and extended a season-long five-match winless streak for the 2018 expansion club.

“We had a lot to play for and at the end, we don’t come out with anything, so that part we’ve got to deal with and move on from,” LAFC coach Bob Bradley told the media after the match. “Most of all, it’s been a difficult stretch. Now we just need to take it and work to get better with important games coming up.”

Wednesday’s match will be the second all-time between the two sides. But the new club powered by stars Adama Diomande, Carlos Vela and Diego Rossi seems to be a shadow of itself that drubbed RSL 5-1 at Rio Tinto Stadium back in March. During the current winless run, LAFC has been outscored 11-4 in league play — in addition to crashing out of the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup to Houston, 7-6, on penalty kicks in the tournament semifinals.

Still, RSL is trying to rebound after the draw against the Impact, and will look to get revenge from the season-opener.

“I think we’d like to definitely show better,” RSL midfielder Kyle Beckerman said. “Nobody thought that was going to happen. It was definitely a wake-up call early in the season. We want to get some respect back.

“But it’s also a Western Conference game against someone above us.”

Petke admits that "any points" RSL can get out of LAFC will be an achievement — not because of any revenge factor, but simply because the two are separated by a single point in a rapidly constricting Western Conference table.

"They have a very stacked roster, and a very good personnel, player for player," Petke said. "It's going to be an extremely difficult game for us."

Kickoff is scheduled for 8 p.m. MDT.

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