San Jose Can't Hang in Salt Lake

At Rice-Eccles Stadium, Real Salt Lake picked apart the defense of the San Jose Earthquakes early and often on its way to a convincing 4-0 victory in the U.S. Open Cup play-in game on Wednesday evening.

Kyle Beckerman had two first-half goals, Yura Movsisyan and Andy Williams finished off the scoring. The Earhtquakes played many of their non-starters in this match and it showed. To make matters worse, San Jose struggled to generate much momentum after losing Jay Ayres and Ryan Cochrane to injuries early in the first half. The two collided while battling for a high ball in the ninth minute. Ayres bloodied his nose in the collision and Cochrane had a bleeding laceration in his forehead. Both players remained down on the turf for nearly five minutes before being helped to the locker room. San Jose manager Frank Yallop was forced into the two early substitutions, bringing in Riley and Jason Hernandez.

On the Cochrane & Ayres injuries in the opening minutes of the game, coach Frank Yallop said “It shocked us a little; it was a pretty bad collision, to be honest. I was sitting close, it was loud and I think it disturbed a few of our players. We just have to see how they are. I think Jay Ayres is worse off than Ryan Cochrane, but they’re both pretty concussed and in the hospital at the moment, so hopefully they’ll be okay.” It was a cold night in Salt Lake and the wintry weather played a role, “It’s never an easy surface to play on, and I think Real Salt Lake played well on it, to be honest, and we didn’t play good at all. Late in the game [we] had a couple of chances, but I think the game was well and buried by then.”

Preston Burpo was in goal for the Quakes and made six saves on the evening. He felt the Earthquakes had blown their opportunity to compete in the tournament, “There’s not much to take out of it; it’s a knock-out game and we lost. You can talk about the weather, you can talk about the field, you can talk about a good crowd tonight. There’s nothing to take out of it quite honestly. At this point we’re out of the tournament. We had two chances at a trophy, this was one, and now we have league trophy to look at.”

So now the Quakes will try to regroup as they come home to play in their opener at Buck Shaw Stadium in Santa Clara on Saturday when they take on FC Dallas. We'll monitor the injury situation of Ryan Cochrane and see how this loss impacts the confidence of the team as they move forward.