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Real Salt Lake 1, Earthquakes 2

May 31, 2009 - 6:00 AM By GEOFF LEPPER STATS MLS Correspondent

SANTA CLARA, Calif. (STATS) - An influx of new talent helped the San Jose Earthquakes shake free of the same old results.

Forward Cornell Glen, back in the MLS for less than a week, scored the initial goal and back Mike Zaher, making his league debut with the Earthquakes, tallied a pair of assists as San Jose snapped its five-match losing streak with a 2-1 win over Real Salt Lake on Saturday.

"This is only one match, we understand that," San Jose coach Frank Yallop said. "But we needed to win this game tonight, and we won it."

Arturo Alvarez tallied on a 30-yard strike to the upper corner to provide needed insurance for San Jose (2-7-2), which hadn't won since March 28.

"I was just trying to be a difference-maker out there instead of hiding," said Zaher, who was signed away from D.C. United as a developmental player in the offseason.

Robbie Findley scored in the 80th minute to end Real's scoreless streak at a league-high 350 minutes, but RSL (3-6-2) nevertheless dropped to 0-5-1 on the road.

Glen had been absent from MLS since closing out the 2006 season with the Los Angeles Galaxy, then coached by Yallop. Glen was playing in his native Trinidad & Tobago until joining San Jose on Tuesday.

One of the MLS teams that had been courting him earlier this season: Real Salt Lake.

"Frank knew me from playing with L.A., and he needed a striker who could score goals, so he gave me a call," Glen said. "I just felt comfortable playing under Frank, and that's what made the decision to come here."

After coming close to scoring twice in the first half, including a strong header that required a spectacular diving save from RSL goalkeeper Nick Rimando, Glen finally broke through in the 52nd minute.

The play began with Bobby Convey tossing a throw-in to Zaher's feet, but RSL was slow to react, and Zaher immediately fired a cross to an open space at the near post. The unmarked Glen ran onto the ball and neatly placed the header between Rimando and the woodwork.

"We took what looked to me like a really, really bad goal . . . that comes off of a throw-in," Real Salt Lake coach Jason Kreis said. "We're going to spend a lot of time talking about that this week, I'm sure."

Alvarez put things away 11 minutes later .

San Jose, which came into the game tied for the league's third-worst offense with only 10 goals, kept the pressure on Rimando for much of the game, generating nine corner kicks to RSL's two. Rimando dropped down to make a point-blank save on Ramiro Corrales' header in the 26th minute, while Clint Mathis cleared a Ryan Johnson shot off the line in the 85th.

"When you're playing against a team that's going to have fatigue after playing a Wednesday night match, away, you've got to possess the ball to wear them out," Kreis said. "We just didn't do it. We kept giving them the ball back, and they just gained confidence."

The Earthquakes looked like they would record their first shutout of the season until Javier Morales sprung Findley loose with a nice pass on the left side that was RSL's first road goal of the season, ending a 620-minute scoreless drought.

San Jose 'keeper Joe Cannon came up with a leaping left-handed stop to turn aside Yura Movsisyan's injury-time blast.

"At 2-1, we may have lost that (match), or they may have scored another goal earlier in the season, but I've turned the screws on them a little bit and they've responded really well," Yallop said. "When those balls were raining into our box late in the game, we stuck our bodies in there and our heads. We didn't want to lose."