Real Salt Lake: Team gets its kicks in record-setting victory

Two weeks ago in the season opener, Real Salt Lake played great against Chicago but was forced to settle for a draw.

Last week at Chivas USA it played well for stretches, but failed to finish its chances and lost by two goals.

It's only fitting then that on Saturday night against highly regarded D.C. United, RSL played good but not great but still managed to walk away with an impressive 4-0 victory — it's most lopsided win in team history.

"That clearly wasn't our prettiest soccer, but we'd been playing pretty nice soccer and not getting results," said Real defender Chris Wingert. "In a lot of ways we did to them what Chivas did to us last week, we scored when we had chances and put them in a position they didn't want to be in and did what we had to do to win."

On three previous occasions in franchise history RSL notched three-goal victories, most recently a 4-1 win over Colorado on Aug. 9, but Saturday's four-goal outburst set a new benchmark in team history.

The victory helped Salt Lake improve to 1-1-1 on the season, with a two-game road trip to Toronto FC and D.C. United looming in the coming weeks.

"It's always tough getting that first victory. To come home we knew we needed to play well in front our fans and play well for us, and we believed in ourselves," said Real keeper Nick Rimando.

RSL prevailed by scoring twice in the opening 20 minutes and then twice more in the closing 15 minutes. In between the soccer was quite average, but Kreis had a suggestion as to why.

"Especially in the first half we were a little unsure how to play with the lead, we just dropped off so deep ... we were probably fortunate we didn't give them one before halftime," said Kreis.

D.C. United's sluggish defending could've been the product of fatigue, fresh off its Wednesday night performance at home against Mexican club Pachuca in the CONCACAF Champions Cup. Less than 72 hours after that match, D.C. coach Tom Soehn opted to rest his million-dollar midfielder Marcelo Gallardo and starting keeper Zach Wells, and the end result was a humbling loss — its third straight at Rice-Eccles Stadium.

"They came in thinking it was going to be the old Real Salt Lake and we showed them tonight that this is a different team," said midfielder Kyle Beckerman, who accounted for two goals.

RSL opened the the scoring in the 12th minute with Dema Kovalenko slotting a perfect through ball to Beckerman, who easily buried the shot past D.C. United's back-up rookie keeper Jose Carvallo.