The losses, and the red cards, are mounting for Real Salt Lake.
On Saturday night, RSL dropped a second consecutive game at Rio Tinto Stadium and suffered defeat for the third time in the last four games.
Freddy Juarez’s squad have just one win in their last six games and are 11th in the Western Conference, though just one point below the playoff line.
In consecutive defeats to the Colorado Rapids and the Vancouver Whitecaps Saturday, RSL have finished with 10 men. First it was second-half substitute Douglas Martinez who received a straight red card for violent conduct following Video Review in the Rocky Mountain Cup defeat.
On Saturday, veteran Kyle Beckerman was sent off for a second bookable offense, also after Video Review, for clipping goalkeeper Thomas Hasal with his foot.
Beckerman was also shown a red card at the end of a 5-2 defeat to the San Jose Earthquakes at the MLS is Back Tournament which resulted in an additional one-game ban — two in total — as well as an undisclosed fine for kicking the ball at referee Drew Fischer at the final whistle.
“I’m going to have to address it because it’s not us,” Juarez said after the 2-1 loss to the Whitecaps. “It was a little bit unlucky. It wasn’t anything vicious today. It was a second yellow, so it’s not a discipline thing. Even the one last week with Douglas, I thought that Douglas had someone push on him and then he reacts, I get it. Contact to the head, red. It’s not a disciplinary thing, it’s just the heat of the moment. It’s a second yellow. Beckerman knows better than that. He’s a professional and he feels bad about it.
“We’ll mention it, and we just have to be mature,” he added. “That wasn’t a problem of ours last year, so we have to get back to containing ourselves in situations and not putting ourselves in those situations. If we have a yellow already, we just have to be a bit smarter.”
