A first victory — for Real?

No team in Major League Soccer is in worse shape right now than Real Salt Lake, even though the Chicago Fire might be a close second after a disastrous string of poor outings in May.

It stands to reason then that when the struggling teams meet up at Toyota Park in Chicago today, both will be hoping to exploit the other's struggles and to correct their own deficiencies. Kickoff is set for 3 p.m., with the match being televised on Telefutura.

In the big picture, RSL is much more desperate for a result than Chicago. Even though the Fire have struggled losing four straight, they had a fantastic April and still have 10 points in the standings. Real Salt Lake, meanwhile, is still winless through seven games, a trend that can't continue much longer if coach Jason Kreis' team wants to make good on its "playoff or bust" mentality.

Because at this point, 2007 is shaping up to be a major bust.

Kreis is optimistic this week's blockbuster trade that sent Jeff Cunningham to Toronto FC in exchange for Alecko Eskandarian is the first step toward turning the season around. Asked whether Eskandarian would start after just two training sessions with his new team, Kreis simply smiled and said, "we'll see."

For a team seeking improvements in all facets of the game, keeping Eskandarian on the bench just doesn't seem like an option.

Today's match is the third in eight days for Real, which fell to FC Dallas 2-1 last Sunday before dropping a U.S. Open Cup qualifying match at Colorado on Wednesday, 2-1.

"We will approach that game as we've approached all the rest so far, we really need to be focused on ourselves right now, focus on our areas of the team we need to improve upon," said Kreis. "We need to focus on the fact I think we've started too slowly too many times in the first half."

That was grossly obvious against

FC Dallas, as Real played one of its worst halves of the year and was lucky to only be trailing 1-0 at the half. Ironically enough, Chicago was actually in a worse position three days ago. Facing the New York Red Bulls in ESPN2's Thursday night game of the week, the Fire surrendered two goals within the first three minutes and never recovered in falling 3-0.

"They're a very good team, they're a team that's going through a bit of bad form, bad results, even though during every game they've really had moments where they've played extremely well," said Kreis.

Like Real Salt Lake, however, those moments need to be sustained over 90 minutes.

RSL midfielder Chris Lancos will likely get his first MLS regular season start today as the team adjusts to life without Carey Talley, who's out four to six weeks with a slight leg fracture. Lancos played 80 minutes against Dallas after coming on for the injured Talley, and then he started against Colorado in the Open Cup.

Regardless of who's starting at holding midfielder, Real needs to find a way to play well early, and maybe even score the game's first goal. In every match this year besides the scoreless draw against Columbus in Week 2, RSL allowed the game's first goal.

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E-mail: jedward@desnews.com