Real Salt Lake Getting Spark From Movsisyan

REAL SALT LAKE GETTING SPARK FROM MOVSISYAN

USA Today
Nov 7 2008

For Real Salt Lake’s Yura Movsisyan, there’s no time like the
last minute. The 21-year-old striker scored in the 90th minute of
the regular-season finale at the Colorado Rapids to put Real in the
playoffs. Then he scored in the 90th minute of last week’s playoff
game against Chivas USA to give Real a 1-0 lead heading into Saturday
night’s second leg of the two-leg aggregate-goals series (Fox Soccer
Channel, 10:30 ET).

Getting the job done late is appropriate for a player who puts in
extra work after practice and didn’t even take up the game seriously
until age 12, when many serious youth players are already funneling
into elite programs.

His late start was a result of growing up an outsider overseas. When
the Soviet Union splintered, Movsisyan lived in Azerbaijan. But he’d
rather not talk about that country.

"I’m Armenian, and that’s what I want people to know," Movsisyan says.

"The staple of the Armenian culture is that we’re loving people but
we’re very resilient," Eskandarian says. "We’re always accepting of
our own as family even if we don’t know them."

Movsisyan, not playing much for Kansas City at the time, shyly didn’t
approach Eskandarian when his team met Eskandarian’s in 2006. But
Eskandarian, then with D.C. United, sought him out to exchange jerseys
and phone numbers. "When I had a chance to meet him, a fellow Armenian,
it was something special," Movsisyan says.

Eskandarian has since moved on and will be on the other side of the
playoff matchup with Chivas USA. But another reason Movsisyan welcomed
the move to Utah was to learn from coach Jason Kreis, who scored 108
goals in his MLS career.

"We really knew nothing about him, so I had to look at video clips
of him and liked what I saw," Kreis says. "I was willing to take a
little bit of a gamble."

Kreis, who has a talented corps of strikers on the roster, has worked
with Movsisyan on finishing skills and tactics, teaching him how to
combine with other attackers. Yet Movsisyan’s raw talent led to the
goal against Chivas USA, an audacious back-heel flick that wrong-footed
goalkeeper Zach Thornton.

"It was all instinct," Movsisyan says. "You never really know where the
ball’s going to go because you’re not actually facing the goal. … It
was very difficult for a goalkeeper to read what you’re doing."

Though that goal came against his team, Movsisyan’s friend likes the
young striker’s approach.

"He’ll try things that if they don’t work, he’s going to have a
bunch of guys yelling at him, but if they do work, everyone loves
you," Eskandarian says. "He’s not afraid to take those risks. That’s
something I admire from him, and I’m glad it’s working out."

Sellout expected:

The Houston Dynamo, the West’s top seed, has roughly 6,000 seats left
for Sunday’s game against the New York Red Bulls (Telefutura, 3 ET).

"We have an attitude, internally, that the playoffs need to sell out,"
Dynamo chief operating officer Chris Canetti says.

The team worked with the NFL’s Texans on the timing of their press
conferences this week, ensuring the presence of every Houston TV
station, English and Spanish, at the Dynamo gathering, Canetti says.

The first game was a 1-1 tie.

Eastern playoffs:

The top-seeded Columbus Crew also is tied 1-1. The Crew will host
Kansas City on Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET, HDNet). The New England
Revolution and Chicago Fire met Thursday night in the other East
matchup. The teams played to a 0-0 draw in the first leg, leaving
injury-riddled New England a difficult task in Chicago.