Know Thine Enemy: Real Salt Lake of Sandy, Utah
Sounders FC hosts Real Salt Lake Saturday night at Qwest Field. We thought you might want to know a little about the team our local 11 (?) will be facing.
First of all, the name. It's not "Real" is in "that shorty's real fine." No. The "Real" in Real Salt Lake is given the Spanish pronunciation, "ray-AL." According to our imagination, the team's owners are elderly industrialists who believe that Utah is still part of Mexico. Following with this trend, they sold naming rights for the team's stadium to a Spanish mining concern. Apparently RSL's owners lost touch with reality during the Mexican-American War--consequently they believe the man frequently appearing in White House press conferences is James Polk's valet.
RSL's home field, Rio Tinto Stadium, is in Sandy, Utah, a mall-heavy suburb about 15 miles south of SLC proper. The mayor of Sandy, Tom Dolan, shares a name with this Tom Dolan, a dreamy former Olympic swimmer--so if you’re trying to meet girls by telling them you are Tom Dolan, mayor of Sandy, Utah, we suggest that you change your story.
Sandy's most famous residents are fictional: The Henricksons, whose wacky bigamy-related hijinks can be seen on one of your HBO channels seemingly every second of the day. RSL's owners watch on HBO en Espanol, which they think is a local station.
Now let's talk about Real Salt Lake's best player, Kyle Beckerman. As you can see from the picture above, Beckerman feels very passionately about saving Darfur. Here's a photo of him playing a guitar, we'd be shocked if he's not working out the guitar vamp from "Satellite."
If Real Salt Lake scores a goal, it will likely come from their 21-year-old striker Yura Movsisyan, an ethnically Armenian emigrant from Azerbaijan. If you are wondering why we make the distinction between Movsisyan's ethnic status and his place of birth, you need to brush up on your Central Asian geopolitics. The short version: They all want to kill each other.
Armenia and Azerbaijan were engaged in that very task during Movsisyan's youth, forcing his family to flee to the United States. They settled in Los Angeles' "Little Armenia," which is actually bigger than most U.S. cities. Says Movsisyan of his L.A. neighborhood: "Everywhere I go, it's almost all Armenians...especially in Glendale and Hollywood." Having briefly lived in Glendale, we can assure you that he's not exaggerating.
A digression: Los Angeles has more Armenians and more hot women than any other place in the country, which is pretty impressive considering that there are no hot Armenian women. Kim Kardashian doesn't count, she's only half--why do you think her dad married outside the tribe? (Side note to Armenians: We were forced to write this last passage by an Azerbaijani named Tom Dolan. Please kill him and not us.)
Sounders FC plays Real Salt Lake on Saturday, at 7:30 p.m., at Qwest Field. The game will be televised live on KONG (6 on Comcast, 16 on broadcast) and you can pick up the radio broadcast on 97.3 FM. For tickets: Ticketmaster - StubHub - Craigslist.
