Real Salt Lake coach Jason Kreis had a blunt, terse response to the tackle for which MLS handed Jean Alexandre a one-game suspension that rules him out of RSL’smatch Wednesday at Chicago.
“I didn’t see anything in it,” said Kreis of an incident that did not warrant a card in the 1-1 tie with D.C. United last weekend. Kreis has deployedAlexandre — normally a midfielder — up front to counteract the absences of Paulo Jr. (injured) and Alvaro Saborio and Arturo Alvarez (both playedin the Gold Cup). Though their teams, Costa Rica and El Salvador, respectively, were eliminated over the weekend, their availability and fitness to play a midweek match will be assessed on gameday.
One Gold Cup returnee, Canadian midfielder Will Johnson, has declared himself available for selection. “I hope so, but that’s a question for [Kreis],” saidJohnson, who lived in Chicago as a youth and was briefly a member of the Fire. “I feel ready to go.” Johnson returned to the team before the D.C.game and came on as a sub in the 66th minute.
“It’s tough being Wednesday,” Johnson told Martin Renzhofer. “There’s not going to be the party when we come to town on a Saturday. It willstill be a lot of fun. We’ll have a lot of support there. My family might actually outnumber the Chicago Fire fans, so it will be cool.”