Real Salt Lake will play for MLS Cup tonight

SEATTLE — Real Salt Lake has come a long way this season since its darkest hour back in Texas in late September.

The club was coming off a 3-0 loss at FC Dallas and by all accounts needed to win its final three games of the season to have any hope of making the playoffs. The odds looked bleak at best, and RSL was helpless to do anything about it for nearly three weeks thanks to a quirky 18-day break in the schedule.

It ended up being the best thing for Real Salt Lake, and it's a big reason the team is playing the Los Angeles Galaxy today at 6:30 p.m. (MDT) in the MLS Cup final at Qwest Field in Seattle.

"We were afforded that opportunity to step back and work our guys hard and remind them and show them what it took to make us a successful team last year and what it would take to make us a successful team this year," said Kreis. "The guys have taken that message on full bore; worked very, very hard; and continued to work hard in that difficult patch."

The results since the 18-day break speak for themselves. RSL finished the regular season with a 2-1-0 record, sneaked into the playoffs on the final day of the regular season and is unbeaten in three playoff matches.

Most people outside of Utah just assume the Galaxy will prevail and win its third MLS Cup today, but Andy Williams said his heritage has him thinking differently.

"In Jamaica there's a saying, small ax chops big tree, so we're considering ourselves a small ax and we've got a big tree this Sunday," said Williams, the last remaining member of RSL's expansion team back in 2005. "We've been underdogs the last two playoff games; it's fine by us."

That underdog status has been a galvanizing factor for Real Salt Lake throughout the playoffs and won't be any different when it takes the field against the Western Conference regular-season champs.

"We've really come together, we're super excited. It's kind of gone by really, really quickly," said midfielder Will Johnson. "We've just been taking it one game at a time, not looking too far ahead and that's seemed to work for us."

Despite the underdog label, RSL is plenty confident and should be. It won the season series against Los Angeles by winning at the Home Depot Center and then tying at Rio Tinto Stadium. The results are a bit deceiving though as David Beckham didn't play in either match and Landon Donovan only played in one.

The Galaxy have been a different team since Beckham's arrival from Europe. Before he returned from AC Milan, Los Angeles was hovering around the playoff bubble with a 5-3-9 record. Since his return the Galaxy are 7-3-3 and are a completely different team offensively and defensively.