RSL on top after beating Seattle

SANDY, Utah – Real Salt Lake is known for starting fast at home, so the Seattle Sounders concentrated on surviving those early minutes before taking their chances later.

That worked well enough to keep them even into the second half, when RSL made them pay for a couple of defensive errors and held on for a 2-1 win before a sellout crowd of 20,483 at Rio Tinto Stadium.

“We knew it was going to be a tough game going in,” Seattle coach Sigi Schmid said. “I thought we managed the game pretty well in the first half. We know they like to put teams under a lot of pressure the first 30 minutes. I thought we sustained that. We had some good counter chances as well.”

The result moved Salt Lake (11-4-9) to the top of Major League Soccer’s Western Conference standings, one point ahead of the Sounders (13-7-2) who have two games in hand.

“We were really up for it,” RSL midfielder Kyle Beckerman said. “We were excited for the game and we felt like this was a huge opportunity that we earned. It was up to us to take advantage of that.”

RSL piled up some solid chances early, but Seattle held them off until the 53rd minute. Then RSL goals-leader Joao Plata beat Seattle’s Lamar Neagle to a free kick sent into the box by Luke Mulholland and headed it in.

Four minutes later, Mulholland was the target of a pass threaded between midfielder Osvaldo Alonoso and defender Leo Gonzalez. Alonso went down to try to clear it, but Mulholland got there first and sent the ball into the goal.

“I think the first goal was more important than the second,” Schmid said. “Obviously there was that little 5-minute span where we took the two goals. But the first goal was the one that – when you’re tired a little bit after playing the game on Wednesday; third game in six days – then that one takes the air out of the balloon a little bit.”

Seattle got one goal back in the 72nd minute, when Chad Barrett finished a sequence of chances that had begun with a Kenny Cooper a pass into the box.