RSL finishes preseason with a draw

LAS VEGAS — For Real Salt Lake, Saturday's final preseason game against Colorado was all about cleaning things up and building some momentum heading into its season opener on April 7.

The defense did its part, but offensively RSL still has a few things to sharpen up before kicking off the 2007 season against FC Dallas this Saturday at Rice-Eccles Stadium.

Neither team capitalized on the few scoring opportunities they produced at Peter Johann Memorial Field, and the end result was a 0-0 draw in front of sell-out crowd of 2,152.

"Overall the effort was good, obviously it's still a tune-up but we came out of it pretty healthy," said Real coach John Ellinger, who quickly added that, "now the fun begins."

In many ways, even though it was a preseason game, it was like most Rocky Mountain Cup rivalry games — chippy. And even though there were five yellow cards and one red card by Colorado's Brandon Prideaux, it never got out of control.

"The intensity was high, but they've got enough professionals on the field and we've got enough professionals on the field to know that it's still preseason and we want to get to next week's game," said Ellinger.

Following the stalemate, Real wrapped up its preseason with a 7-5-4 record, but more importantly it ended the season on a five-game unbeaten streak.

Overall, Ellinger was pleased with the productivity from his 4-5-1 formation featuring Mehdi Ballouchy at attacking midfield, but he felt the team could've been more productive by playing through the midfield a bit more.

"When we play through midfield we had more success," said Ellinger. "If we've got an advantage of an extra player in the midfield we've got to utilize it."

In the opening half, RSL was lucky not to fall behind in the 23rd minute. Eddie Pope played a slow dribbler in the direction of keeper Nick Rimando, but his errant pass was easily tracked down first by Herculez Gomez, who surprisingly panicked because he didn't even attack Rimando one-on-one instead choosing to spray a harmless 20-yard shot right at the keeper.

Later in the half, for the several hundred Real fans who made trek to Las Vegas, Freddy Adu gave them a glimpse into his talent and creativity in the 26th minute. In traffic, he created just enough space for himself to unleash a 25-yard left-footed laser that sailed mere inches over the crossbar.