By Todd Hayes
Real Salt Lake?s bad luck continued to haunt them at the Home Depot Center in Los Angeles on Saturday.
Real lost there for the second time this year, this time 1-0 to CD Chivas USA, dropping RSL to 1-3-2 on the season. Adding salt to the wound were the losses of midfielder Clint Mathis and goalkeeper D.J. Countess to injury, two of the team?s most important players.
?I?m starting to hate this place,? Coach John Ellinger said of the Home Depot Center in a news release.
Mathis was injured when he took a knee to his lower back in the 30th minute of the game. D.J. Countess strained his shoulder as he went for a stop against Chivas USA midfielder Francisco Mendoza. The strained shoulder did not stop him from getting right up and stopping a bicycle kick attempt by Ramon Ramirez.
?I was down,? Countess said. ?I was in pain. And the only way thing I could think of was to somehow try and make the save. I don?t care if it was my face, my leg, whatever.?
The only shot that got by Countess was a penalty kick taken by Chivas USA?s Hector Cuadros. The penalty kick came after a controversial intentional hand-ball called in the box was made against Real defender Marlon Rojas, who started in place of Rusty Pierce.
?I was pretty disappointed with some of the decisions that were made on the field tonight,? Countess said. ?When a fluke penalty kick wins the game, that?s pretty disappointing.?
Although Countess guessed right by going to his right side, he dove low as Cuadros shot high.
Once again, the game was a tale of two halves for RSL. In the first half, Real came out lethargic and struggled to get many scoring opportunities. This was made more difficult when Mathis left in the 30th minute.
At halftime, Ellinger shuffled his lineup, benching midfielder Andy Williams, who was not up to full speed still trying to recover from a previous injury ironically suffered the last time Real played in Los Angeles. In the second half, the changes made by Ellinger seemed to work as the team gave a much better outing almost drawing even a couple of times with the home team.
?If we could have put together two halves like the second,? Ellinger said, ?I think it would have been a different outcome.?
Echoing the sentiments of his coach, Countess did not blame the blame the refs for the final outcome.
?We need to look at ourselves in the mirror and ask ?What?s going on? because the effort wasn?t there,? Countess said.