SANDY — Real Salt Lake plugged away and plugged away and plugged away on Saturday afternoon. Eventually, it paid off with an 88th-minute goal by Robbie Findley and a 1-0 win over Columbus in the opening leg of the first round of the MLS Cup playoffs at Rio Tinto Stadium.

But it wasn't lost on RSL coach Jason Kreis just how much his squad struggled to pass the ball against the defensive-minded Crew. Real's midfield had an extremely tough time stringing passes together for most of the afternoon, and it took a great linkup between a pair of forwards — Yura Movsisyan to Findley — to eventually break down Columbus.

"Honestly," said Kreis, "I'm a little disappointed in the play tonight — little disappointed that we couldn't be a little more stylish. I like to win our games at home with a little more flare and a little bit more possession.

"But it's the playoffs and things are different.... The game takes a long, long time to open up, and I'm not sure it did. You look at the stats — eight shots (for RSL) and seven shots (for Columbus) — that's about half of what's usually produced here."

Columbus will host RSL on Thursday in the critical second leg between the two teams.

From the moment Columbus' team sheet was distributed before kickoff and it was revealed that reigning MVP Guillermo Barros Schelotto was going to be on the bench, many thought Columbus would be content to sit back and force RSL to try and break down the Crew.

That's precisely what happened, and Salt Lake's midfield simply struggled to find ways to get into dangerous positions.

To the credit of RSL's midfielders, they kept trying and trying, and they did get better as the game wore along.

"Possession wasn't high enough for me," said Kreis. "There weren't enough passes connected. I felt like in the first half we had a team that looked scared. Which was surprising for me because, really, in the past month or so in critical matches, I think we've had a team that's played great soccer. Going back to last year in the first round of the playoffs, I think we had a team that played fantastic soccer.

"For me, I'm not sure why. Perhaps it is sort of that feeling in the players about having two games to play. But I just thought that we were missing too many passes, and our movement in the midfield wasn't good enough, either. But it didn't get better in the second half."

RSL midfielder Andy Williams echoed those sentiments, and it's clear that RSL will need to continue to improve in the second leg when it faces what will be an undoubtedly different Columbus team.

"It was difficult, but ... we just kept knocking on the door and we were able to (score) by our two forwards linking up," said Williams. "It's going to be a lot better battle on Thursday. We're not expecting anything else. They're the defending champs."

e-mail: drasmussen@desnews.com