Wasatch Soccer Sentinel
America First Field was decked out for the first home match of 2023. The new lighting system could be a good candidate for player of the match, as it was, let’s just say it, awesome. Also, it was nice to see that the sound system is being upgraded. It also looks like Real Salt Lake is starting some new traditions for home matches, and that was nice to see as well.
There were some great plays in the match, including Justen Glad’s equalizing goal. And while the ref did receive some of the crowd’s frustration, he also did reverse that red card call on Damir Kreilach. Now, none of those win the player of the match this week. Part of the problem with picking a player of the match is that there are pure statistics, and then there are the emotions a loss at home brings. There are the emotions of how the referee lets things go or controls the match. There are frustrations about where a player is or who they are marking, and I think it is worth exploring that for a minute.
We don’t fully know what Pablo Matroeni’s game plan involved. We can take things from post match comments, we can break down goals given up and see where players were, and all of that is an exercise is pure speculation. We saw a very spread out 4-4-2 formation on Saturday. Damir Kreilach and Rubio Rubin were far up the field, with little defensive support. We had miscommunication on defense, including an exchange between Braian Ojeda and Brian Oviedo. Ojeda was indicating that Oviedo had not been in position and was marking the wrong person.
