(by Michael Black deseretnews.com 8-26-10)
Real Salt Lake nearly made history Wednesday night. Then it didn't, then it did, and in the end, it didn't.
No Major League Soccer team has ever won a competition soccer game in Mexico, and while RSL came awfully close, that record stayed intact. A most bizarre ending kept it that way as the Mexican League's Cruz Azul came away with a 5-4 win over Real in a CONCACAF Champions League game in Mexico City with a four-goal outburst in less than 20 minutes.
"Everything happened so fast. I have never been a part of a game like that," said midfielder Kyle Beckerman in a radio interview.
When RSL forward Fabian Espindola scored in the 64th minute to give the visiting squad a 3-1 lead, the 0-19-2 record for MLS teams south of the border seemed destined to be changed by replacing the zero with a one. Instead, RSL experienced 19 minutes of its worst defensive soccer in team history.
"That's gravely disappointing, and it's not like our team," said coach Jason Kreis of the collapse. "After we went through a good end of the season last year and won the championship, I feel that we're a mature team that typically doesn't make mistakes like that."
The game didn't start well for Real. Following a foul called near midfield in the 5th minute, the Mexican squad played a quick restart to a streaking Javier Orozco, who took the through ball and beat goalkeeper Nick Rimando with a touch around him and hit it into the empty net. A replay clearly the showed the restart was illegal, however, as the ball never came to rest and was still moving when it was struck.
That certainly wasn't the strangest thing that happened as Mother Nature struck next with a torrential downpour that turned the pitch into a swamp — it even delayed the start of the second half for nearly 20 minutes as workers tried to push some of the surface water off the field.
Alvaro Saborio leveled things in the 23rd minute with a converted penalty kick after defender Horacio Cervantes knocked down Espindola in the box. Saborio put RSL ahead in the 44th minute when he capitalized on another Cervantes mistake. He intercepted a back pass that was drastically slowed by the water accumulation on the field and beat the keeper.
Real appeared headed for history when Espindola got what should have been the insurance goal in the 64th minute. Saborio dribbled the ball wide on the right side of the penalty area. He cut the ball back across the mouth of the goal, where Espindola raced in and hit the ball into the open net for an apparent win.
It wasn't over.
"I do think we got a little too comfortable there and thought that maybe it was going to be easy," said Kreis. "We've seen it in our league before where, if we get a two-goal lead, the other team quits. And obviously there's no quit in Cruz Azul."
The nightmare began in the 75th minute. Orozco scored No. 2 on a shot deflected by defender Rauwshan McKenzie, narrowing the gap to one at 3-2.
It was only the beginning.
Orozco completed his hat trick in the 88th minute to make it 3-3 with a shot from the top of the box. Only one minute later, he struck again. He got his fourth tally of the night when he got behind McKenzie on a cross and once again beat Rimando. The miracle come-from-behind win was complete.
But wait.
Two minutes into stoppage time, RSL midfielder Will Johnson took a deflected pass in the penalty area and drove the ball into the net for the miracle draw.
But wait again.
In the 94th minute Christian Gimenez fired a shot from the top of the box that once again deflected, of course, and found the back of the net, sending the home crowd into a frenzy for the 5-4 win.
"I just think we had a couple of mental lapses and they made us pay for it," said Beckerman on the radio. "We made them pay for some lapses they made, and then they just made us pay one more."
Real must quickly regroup as it resumes MLS play with a game Saturday in Toronto.
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