Real winless streak reaches 18 games

At this point, Real Salt Lake might have to start living vicariously through its unbeaten reserve team.

RSL tacked on another loss to its ridiculously long 18-game winless streak Saturday as the beleaguered Columbus Crew limped into Rice-Eccles Stadium and stole a 1-0 victory.

For the players and coaches, the most maddening part about Saturday's loss, which dropped the club to 0-5-1 on the season, was that Salt Lake was in control almost the entire game.

It enjoyed most of the possession, dominated throughout long stretches and only surrendered two shots on goal, but it still wasn't enough.

"That's a tough one to swallow, two shots on goal and they walk away with the 1-0 win," said Real defender Carey Talley. "At this point, as we've seen in the last four or five games, there's 89 minutes and 50 seconds of concentration, and that (other) 10 seconds we get caught."

That one mistake came in the 70th on rookie Jason Garey's first career goal. He ran onto a pass from Ezra Hendrickson in the box, and held off a defender long enough to one-time a shot past RSL keeper Scott Garlick. It was Columbus' only shot on goal other than a Kyle Martino 27th-minute strike that Garlick did well to smother with his left hand.

Throughout the rest of the game, Salt Lake was in control.

Even after Jeff Cunningham's long-range shot in the 29th minute pinged off the crossbar, the players didn't start feeling sorry for themselves and kept plugging away.

"At that point, I thought it's only a matter of time," said midfielder Chris Klein. "We're in the game, we've got a positive attitude, we're going forward. OK, it's only a matter of time until the goal comes."

It never did despite 11 shots, and six that went on goal.

According to coach John Ellinger, the quality of the shots simply weren't there.

"I feel our finishing was definitely poor, that's the only way I can describe it," said Ellinger. "The ones on goal, all (Columbus keeper) Jon Busch had to do was go down to the knees and catch them."

Salt Lake's best opportunity actually came off the foot of Klein. Late in the first half, after freeing himself from defender Rusty Pierce by cutting the ball back toward the center of the box, Klein tried to catch Busch cheating toward the far post, but his near-post shot went two yards wide.

"I don't know how many chances we had in the first half, but we've got to put one away," said Klein.

No one was making excuses after the game, even when an apparent handball in the box on Columbus wasn't called in the 89th minute. The players all agreed, it doesn't matter how well they played, they need to get a win.