Real Salt Lake scores, loses again on road

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Not even a date with the softest defense in Major League Soccer could help Real Salt Lake with that elusive road breakthrough — even though it did finally score a goal.

Against a San Jose team with the fewest points in MLS prior to Saturday night, a team that had surrendered a league-high 21 goals, RSL struggled for most of the match and continued its free fall down the Western Conference standings falling to the Earthquakes 2-1 at Buck Shaw Stadium.

The loss was a backward step for a club that earned an important draw at D.C. United last week.

"We've lost 5 out of 6 games (on the road), that's not getting close to anything, that's not good enough," said Real Salt Lake midfielder Will Johnson.

After a scoreless first half, San Jose dominated the opening 25 minutes of the second half scoring twice before hanging on after Robbie Findley's 80th-minute goal.

Though the goal wasn't enough to net Real Salt Lake its first road win of the season, Findley's goal did put a halt to several unimpressive streaks. It was RSL's first road goal of the season — ending a streak of 529 scoreless minutes — while it also ended RSL's overall scoring drought of 349 minutes dating back to Johnson's 90th-minute goal against the Los Angeles Galaxy.

"I thought we started out with the right mentality and right intensity for the first 10 minutes, as the game went along it really seemed like we lost our way. We didn't possess the ball well at all tonight," said RSL coach Jason Kreis. "When you play against a team that's gonna have a fatigue after playing a Wednesday night match away you've got to possess the ball to wear them out, and we just didn't do it."

Kreis hoped several line-up shake-ups, including benching Findley, Yura Movsisyan and Clint Mathis might get the team going, but their replacements were just as ineffective.

Nick Rimando did well to keep his team in the game with several fantastic saves in the first half, but things unraveled quickly in a dominant second half for San Jose.

"Second half we came out a little flat, they had more energy. At the beginning of the second half not all 11 guys were committed to defense, I think we just needed to strap down and put the trenches in for a little bit and weather the storm," said Kyle Beckerman. "We weren't able to do that and then they got a goal."