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Real Salt Lake, Chicago settle for scoreless draw

Jul 20, 2008 - 3:52 AM BRIDGEVIEW, Illinois (Ticker) -- Real Salt Lake and the Chicago Fire had plenty of opportunities to score, but solid goalkeeping - and a few unfortunate bounces - netted the teams a scoreless draw on Saturday.

Goalkeeper Nick Rimando recorded two saves for Real Salt Lake (6-6-6), which continued to struggle away from Rice-Eccles Stadium. It is 1-6-1 on the road.

Jon Busch also made two stops for Chicago (7-5-4), which is 3-3-2 at Toyota Park this season.

As expected, both goalkeepers credited their defenders for their play on Saturday.

"We moved forward well, pressed them and we did that and our defense did good (too)," Rimando said. "That made my job easier. Every game we want to get points."

"The guys in the back on defense are doing a fantastic job," Busch said. "Our whole back line should be on the All-Star team."

Real Salt Lake's Andy Williams nearly tallied against his former team in the eighth minute, but his blast from the top of the box deflected off the crossbar. In the 41st minute, defender Jamison Olave drilled a right-footed shot off the right post.

For his part, Chris Rolfe also had an excellent chance for the Fire to break the scoreless draw in the 33rd minute, but his left-footed shot from inside of the penalty area sailed wide of the net.

"It was a tale of two halves," said Real Salt Lake coach Jason Kreis, who served the final match of his two-game suspension for publicly criticizing officials last Saturday. "I thought we were the better team in the first half. We created quite a few quite a few good scoring chances.

"In the second half, Chicago was all over us. They were clearly the dominate team, but our guys fought hard."

Fire coach Denis Hamlett agreed with his counterpart.

"It's disappointing, I felt like we wasted the first 45 minutes," he said. "In the second half, we went out and played the way we wanted in to play. We created some good chances and as always, we create good chances and didn't get a goal. We'll take the tie and move on."