SANDY, Utah -- Just as he did a week earlier in Colorado, Yura Movsisyan came up with a dramatic 90th-minute goal to help Real Salt Lake achieve the result they desired.
But that's where the similarities between that draw with the Rapids and Saturday's 1-0 victory against Chivas USA end.
Through 90 minutes Saturday in the first leg of their Western Conference Semifinal Series, RSL showed itself to be the superior team on offense and defense. Chivas managed a single shot on goal compared to nine for Real and had only three total shots versus 21 on the RSL side of the scoresheet.
For RSL, it was a case of fortune favoring a dominant effort rather than a lucky goal redeeming a bad night of soccer.
"The playoffs are all about who's playing well at the right time," midfielder Will Johnson said. "Anybody who watched this game today will agree 100 percent that we deserved to win this game."
Movsisyan's goal perfectly embodied everything good that came out of a relentless attack on Chivas.
Morales put RSL in a position for good things to happen when he wrestled the ball away on a throw-in to start the sequence. He then crossed from near the endline up to Movsisyan. From there, Movsisyan used a brilliant flick off the inside of his right heel to send it home.
Being a hero for a second consecutive game came easy to him because of all the team had done leading up to that point.
"We kept the ball," Movsisyan said. "We created chances. Everybody on the field fought and this is the result you get when everybody fights."
RSL set the tone by avoiding the kind of sluggish start that had plagued the team in recent weeks. They controlled possession and made it tough for Chivas to even cross midfield much of the time.
That advantage really began to show as the second half minutes ticked away. Of RSL's 12 shots after halftime, seven ended up on frame. An aggressive offense could be traced directly to an aggressive defense that refused to let Chivas gain even a glimmer of any useful advantage.
"I thought our aggressive mentality allowed us to win balls in their half," RSL coach Jason Kreis said. "We weren't having to cover the whole distance of the field the whole night."
Without Movsisyan coming through in the clutch again, the story of the night might have been missed opportunities. A couple of those missed chances, in particular, hurt.
The first came when Morales swung a corner kick out to Nat Borchers at the edge of the six-yard box in the 49th minute. Borchers got his head under the ball and put it perfectly on frame. Chivas narrowly dodged the bullet when Alex Razov cleared it off the line at the last moment.
The second missed opportunity happened when Movsisyan looked to have the game's first goal in the 63rd minute. He shook off former Real teammate Carey Talley as he shadowed him in the penalty area and unleashed a rocket past Thornton. But the goal was waved off after Movsisyan was charged with a foul for taking Talley down near the top of the area.
While it would have been nice to score earlier, getting a goal before the final whistle was the only thing that mattered.
"I like to win in the beginning of the game or the end of the game," Morales said. "It's the same."
With how things ended, it is Chivas who will spend a week wondering how things could have turned out differently. RSL feels confident going into its second leg because the club feels like it has put together a perfect blueprint for beating the Red-and-White next weekend. "We definitely know what we're up against," midfielder Kyle Beckerman said. "Their team is going to be desperate and coming to get us."
Beckerman is confident that if RSL can relax and concentrate on playing good soccer as it did this weekend, everything will turn out just fine. It's a sentiment that is echoed from the coaching staff down to the players.
"We got a great group of guys here," Movsisyan said. "Everybody can play soccer. Everybody can do the job."
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