Real Salt Lake notebook: Team faces dilemma in Open Cup

LEHI — Real Salt Lake opens the Lamar Hunt Open Cup tonight on the road when it faces the San Jose Earthquakes for the second time in three weeks.

The Open Cup itself presents an interesting dilemma for the club — put forth a great effort and win, and keep adding games to an already busy schedule, or give a so-so effort and lose, and it goes against everything the organization preaches and believes in. Anyone who watched RSL coach Jason Kreis during his playing days, or has listened to him since taking over as the head man, knows the choice is pretty clear.

"We're trying to instill a real winning mentality here, whereby every match we go into we not only think we can win, we expect to win. So we can't approach this any differently," said Kreis. "We are going there to do our best to win and we expect to win. Yes, we may need to lean on a few more pieces, but guess what? We're going to have to do that at the end of the season, so we may as well start to figure out now if we are built for that."

By winning the MLS Cup, RSL earned a place in the 2010-11 CONCACAF Champions League, so along with Open Cup games, the club will have those matches to deal with later in the year. While the team wants to win, its top priority is still MLS play. So how will that affect the lineup on the field tonight against the Quakes?

"First and foremost, we have injuries to deal with, unfortunately. That did alter a couple of things we were going to do. The other thing you have to consider is how many veteran pieces do you need on the field to provide a good atmosphere, a good surrounding for everybody to succeed," said Kreis.

"Like I said, we want to win. But will we put out the exact same team as Saturday night? Well, we can't afford to because we don't have some of those guys — they're injured. We also can't afford to because we have another game three days after that."

RSL plays at the Home Depot Center on Saturday in a rematch of last season's championship game against the Los Angeles Galaxy.

INJURY UPDATES: An MRI Monday revealed midfielder Ned Grabavoy has an MCL sprain that will not require surgery, but the injury will keep him out of action for four to six weeks. Javier Morales' injury was not as serious, as it is a right groin strain. He is officially listed as questionable for this weekend, but he probably will not be available until at least next week when the team travels to Columbus. He was at the training session on Tuesday at Xango Field, but did not work out with the team and spent the time with trainers.

INTERNATIONAL CALLUPS: Rookie Luis Gil, the 16-year-old wunderkind RSL acquired from the Kansas City Wizards in the preseason, has been called to camp later this month for the U.S. Under-18 National Team. The U-18's are planning on a short training camp April 25-May 2.

Second-year pro Jean Alexandre has been called to action for his native Haiti. The Haitians have a friendly against Argentina on May 5 in Buenos Aires and he will be gone from May 2-7.

e-mail: mblack@desnews.com