Real Salt Lake can only hope the two opportunities they let slip away against Montreal Saturday afternoon don't come back to haunt them down the stretch run of the season.
The club blew two separate leads in a 3-2 loss on the road, and gave up a stoppage-time goal to Impact defender Matteo Ferrari to snap a two-game winning streak.
“Lack of concentration at the end," midfielder Kyle Beckerman said of the late goal. "It’s a bit unfortunate for us. If we did a little bit better on our chances (earlier in the game) we could have been in a position that, even if they scored at the end, we still could have been in the lead. But we didn’t take all our chances, so we paid the price.”
RSL outshot the Impact 21-17, including seven on target to only five for the home side. They had more possession in the match and appeared to be the better side until the final 10 minutes, when the Impact struck twice to erase a 2-1 lead built on the back ok Beckerman’s first goal of the season in the 77th minute.
They also led 1-0 after an own goal just six minutes into the match.
"I think it's frustrating because I don't feel like we've had a lot of leads, and certainly not a lot of early leads this year,” RSL head coach Jason Kreis said. “I feel like we are always kind of responding to adversity. To be in the driver's seat there at the beginning of the game had a little bit of a different feel. To look back at the moment, what happened when we were up 1-0, we had two glaring chances to go 2-0 and didn't take either one of them. And then Montreal starting coming to the game, caused us some problems."
Kreis praised his team’s aggressive approach in the match, and Beckerman said he’s hopeful the team use the loss as a galvanizing point this early in the season.
“Of course we’re disappointed and frustrated, we have to try and learn from it," Beckerman said. "I think a loss like this can really help us move forward. We need to get a good week of practice in and then when we get back into this position we’ll get something out of it.”
