Soccer: Real Salt Lake's Tony Beltran laments errors in loss

Sandy • Tony Beltran was not in the best of moods. And who could blame him.

The Real Salt Lake defender was involved in both Dallas goals in Saturday night's 2-1 loss before a sellout crowd at Rio Tinto Stadium, including the stunning finale in stoppage time as David Ferriera whistled the game winner into the RSL net.

Typically, it does not take too long after a loss for a good number of Real players to quickly exit the locker room before encountering the swarm of newspaper and dot.com writers and other media.

No one would have blamed Beltran if he, too, had taken a powder. Instead, Beltran never wavered in the face of questions.

"I thought we played good at times, but you know we pretty much weren't being aware of Dallas on the counterattack, especially that last one," a somber Beltran said. "I probably should have fouled there. They got behind me on the first goal as well."

Ferriera was involved with the first goal, too, assisting teammate Fabian Castillo in the 61st minute.

"The first [goal] comes off of a give-and-go in which Tony gets played in behind with Castillo and didn't react quickly enough to it," RSL coach Jason Kreis said. "The second one comes off of our aggressive decisions."

The second goal was the result of a breakdown following a ball that popped free at midfield as RSL pushed for a winner. Dallas split Beltran and Luis Gil.

"Beltran and Gil are both there to make a tackle or make a foul. One of the two has to happen, nothing else can happen," Kreis said. "Unfortunately neither happened."

Instead of salvaging a tie and maybe a better feeling after outplaying Dallas, RSL now must shrug off this bad loss before meeting visiting Panamanian champs Tauro FC in a must-win CONCACAF Champions League group stage clash Tuesday at 8 p.m.

"We gave up that one counterattack, and just have to do a better job of when we were pushing for that goal," Beltran said. "We need to clean that out and maybe we get a second goal or, you know, maybe we lock that dirty point."

martyr@sltrib.com

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RSL vs Tauro FC

P Tuesday, 8 p.m.

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