When the Major League Soccer postseason begins, the debate about home advantage kicks off too. Whichever team plays home first claims that this is the better deal. The team playing home second argues otherwise. For Real Salt Lake players traveling to L.A. next weekend to face Chivas USA with a one-goal lead in its pocket, the advantage is clear — it’s better to be ahead than behind after Game One.
“It’s a huge advantage, winning this game,” said RSL midfielder Will Johnson. “Now they have to train all week a goal down and we get to train all week a goal up. We’ve seen how to beat Chivas. We just saw it. That’s what we have to do again.” It’s hard to argue with that, but as Michael Lewis points out, the team “has a miserable 1-6-1 record against Chivas at the Home Depot Center… It has suffered some of its most disastrous losses to the Goats on the road, and knows they will come out hard, needing a victory to advance.”
“We definitely know what we are up against,” said midfielder Kyle Beckerman. “They’re going to be desperate, coming out to get us. We got a goal, we don’t need to score, but let’s concentrate on playing good soccer and being relaxed. It will be all right. If they do get a goal, we know it’s not over. We’ve come back before.”
Coach Jason Kreis, however, was so buoyed by his team’s attacking performance in the first game Saturday that he said RSL was “going to err on the side of being offensive again. If we were up 2-0 or 3-0, we could certainly talk about changing that. But I do think this team has shown time and time and time again that we’re a better team when we are aggressive.”