Burned on the 4th of July: RSL suffers painful loss to Toronto

This one hurts.

Momentum was there for the taking for Real Salt Lake on the heels of its first victory of the season, especially with Toronto FC coming to town — the expansion team without a road victory.

Chalk it up as another lost opportunity.

After battling back from an early goal by ex-RSL star Jeff Cunningham, Real Salt Lake surrendered a late penalty kick and that was enough to propel Toronto FC to the 2-1 victory Wednesday night.

"I just don't think the mentality was right tonight. I felt we lacked passion ... that's probably more disappointing than anything else," said RSL coach Jason Kreis, who thought he'd get a better effort out of his players on the festive Fourth of July evening in front of 20,751 fans.

"You look out there and think we're going to roll now, we've got confidence, we played well last week, we're going to have some guys out there that are going to be passionate about what they're doing. It just didn't happen."

With the score level at 1-1, the game-changing momentum came in the 79th minute as RSL's Jean-Martial Kipre fouled Toronto newcomer Collin Samuel in the box. Samuel easily buried the penalty to put Toronto FC in front, and help the expansion club improve to 5-7-2.

The loss dropped RSL to a league-worst 1-6-6.

Kreis refused to put all of the blame on the defensive mistake.

"It's always easy to come into these press conferences at the end of the game where a defender makes a mistake. It's easy to point the finger at them, but we need to point the finger at the guys who don't take their chances as well because those are clear-cut chances," said Kreis.

Those chances included Robbie Findley's sixth-minute shot off the right post and then Jamie Watson's 86th shot off the crossbar. While both players were unlucky not to have those go in, Kreis obviously doesn't believe luck had as much to do with it.

"Seems like it's the way it's been going for us," said Real defender Ritchie Kotschau. "Attacking, the finishing's got to be better. Defensively, we've got to finish the plays off."

For a Toronto team with just three away goals in six previous tries, it opened the scoring in the 19th minute on a goal by, who else, Cunningham.

Prior to the match RSL midfielder Andy Williams expected Cunningham to come out fired up, and that's exactly what happened.

Cunningham slipped in behind Real's defense and was in perfect position to run onto Danny Dichio's flicked-on header. His breakaway shot from 18 yards out eventually found the back of the net after bouncing in off both posts.