Real Salt Lake: Team puts superior depth on display

Improved depth was one of the biggest reasons why expectations were so high for Real Salt Lake heading into the 2008 season.

Over the course of such a long season, along with the inevitable injuries and suspensions, the coaching staff believed more depth would translate into more wins.

In Wednesday night's U.S. Open Cup qualifier at Rice-Eccles Stadium, that depth was on full display, and expansion San Jose — a team with virtually no depth — never had a chance.

RSL scored three goals in the opening half, including two in the same minute, as it cruised to the 4-0 victory over the Earthquakes.

"We were very please with the way our team's mentality was, it would've been easy to come out a little bit flat ... but our guys were fantastic, they started out bright and did all the things that we asked of them in the first 20 minutes," said Real Salt Lake coach Jason Kreis.

With the victory Salt Lake advances to the next phase of U.S. Open Cup qualifying on May 27 at the Columbus Crew. A victory in Ohio would send RSL to Chicago for the last phase of qualifying, with that winner officially qualifying for the 48-team tournament.

For a franchise that waited until overtime to win Open Cup matches in each of the past two seasons, Wednesday's match was seriously lacking in drama.

In the 21st minute, Kyle Beckerman put RSL in front 1-0 as he tapped in a loose ball in the box. Teammate Matias Mantilla initially won the header on a corner kick, and the ball trickled to Beckerman, who tapped it in just in front of San Jose keeper Preston Burpo.

A dozen minutes later, Beckerman doubled his team's advantage with a low driven shot struck about 30 yards from goal. Amazingly, in the same 33rd minute, RSL scored again as San Jose coughed the ball up on the kickoff and Matias Cordoba set up Yura Movsisyan to increase the advantage to 3-0.

"Teams are always suspect to make mistakes immediately after you score or get scored on, and they made a pretty bad mistake there and Matias Cordoba was there to punish them for it," said Kreis. "I thought it was a very bright play on his part and an extremely intelligent pass he played to Yura there."

With San Jose coach Frank Yallop deciding to rest most of his regulars for this weekend's match against FC Dallas, Wednesday's outcome was rather predictable. Only Ryan Cochrane and Ramiro Corrales had seen much playing time for the expansion Earthquakes this year, and any hopes for an upset were further dashed early on when defenders Cochrane and Jay Ayres both had to leave the match after a midfield collision.

"I think we were benefactors of that for sure, one of them is Ryan Cochrane and he's really the organizer of the center of the defense for them," said Kreis.