With beads of sweat possibly glistening from his dreadlocks in the evening sun, a man in a claret and cobalt soccer uniform with the word XANGO splashed across his front and bound by a captain’s armband hears something, a word or a phrase.
He looks at this other guy in a different color uniform and reacts, emphatically and forcefully.
The other thing you don't know, is what was said between these two, but you know...you KNOW it wasn't nice.
The question everyone wants to know is why Real Salt Lake captain Kyle Beckerman went all Zinedine Zidane-like on Chicago Fire player Daniel Paladini last week, and head butted him right in the area directly below where Kyle’s hair line and natty dreads meet.
Apparently, it was a pop heard around Major League Soccer because today, Beckerman--not to be confused with Beckham--received a two-game suspension from the league, effectively ending his regular season.
He will still play with the U.S. national team this week in its next two games against Honduras and Ecuador, but the action, and the suspension begs the question: Is Beckerman, and Real Salt Lake as a whole, taking the game too far?
The pressures of losing several games in a row, especially going into the MLS playoffs, may be getting to Beckerman, who has had a season to remember. He is now a fixture on Juergen Klinsmann's new and arguably improved U.S. national team, and he is becoming somewhat of a cult hero around the country for his free-flowing play and personality.
However, other teams like the Fire are beginning to target him and other RSL stars and rough them up, in part because of his, and their success on the international level.
The acts of other teams to weaken RSL’s drive--such as the constant taunts David Beckham imposed on the team during the Galaxy’s recent 2-1 win in Los Angeles--seem to also be wearing thin on RSL head coach Jason Kreis, who decided he had had enough of Becks’ antics and told him so after the game.
The pressure of being an RSL figurehead may also be too much for Beckerman, who as team captain, is asked to handle setting up the midfield and making sure the team follows through with its game plan.
Here’s the other catch: Now that Dema Kovalenko is gone, Kyle is also the team enforcer in midfield, and both responsibilities may be taking their toll on Beckerman.
So where does it end for Beckerman? Is it all his fault for head butting an opponent, or is there somebody bigger to blame?
The responsibility of also playing as a small-market club, with just one designated player, is a great burden for any team, let alone RSL, a team that is expected to win every game and compete with the best of the best.
Week after week, game after game, the refrain is always the same: Jason Kreis is a player’s coach, the players love playing for him--and if they don’t, they’re run out of town--and “the team is the star” mantra is used as often as possible.
Don’t think for one second, however, that teams around MLS are not also paying attention to RSL being called the “Barcelona of Major League Soccer,” or that it's been said the club has changed the way American soccer is viewed in other countries, because both are fact.
That alone has placed a giant target on the chests of RSL as a whole, right across that maverick XANGO logo splashed across the team’s chest.
You know that deep down, many are saying, "How dare they conjure up something new, and imaginative!"
In sum, Real Salt Lake IS the Utah Jazz, a team that everyone admires on the outside but hates to the core of their insides because the core of RSL embodies all the things that people despise when talking to their friends and associates, yet love in their heart of hearts.
Like the Jazz, Real Salt Lake relishes being the enemy on the road, except unlike the team Larry built, RSL actually won a title and the Jazz have not.
In turn, fans have rewarded RSL with the highest praise of all: they sell out virtually every home game at Rio Tinto Stadium, and even did so while Utah played BYU in the annual Holy War college football rivalry battle in Provo.
The mere fact that RSL won one MLS Cup over the talent-rich Los Angeles Galaxy team several years ago may have been the tipping point, and it means that Beckham, and every other opponent will now do anything to destroy and bury Real Salt Lake.
In interviews, the word opponents often use to decribe RSL is "respect," but on the field it often turns to retaliation.
Which brings up my final point: are RSL fans mature enough, and responsible enough, to understand that the team they love must choose their battles wisely, or risk losing them all?
RSL threw everything it had at CONCACAF Champions League, only to come up short in the final. It was a brutal reminder of just how far apart Mexico’s top league and MLS still are, in terms of technical ability and coaching wizardry.
While it was a heady display of courage, skill and fortitude that RSL put on to even make it to the final, Monterrey’s class shined through that night in Sandy, and RSL was simply outplayed.
Make no mistake about it, RSL will go down fighting to the final whistle, but that may be its very problem.
Real Salt Lake and Beckerman must learn, some way and how, to know when to battle and when to walk away.
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