Las Vegas 0 - Real Monarchs 2: Humbling Defeat Shows that Las Vegas has Work to Do

Las Vegas falls 0-2 at home to Real Monarchs in a game that reveals that Las Vegas has some lessons to learn if they want to follow the example of the town's other new sports franchise and make a splash in their opening season.

Here are three thing we learned from this one:

1.  A Word for Experience

This was the Las Vegas Lights' ninth regular season game (and only their tenth professional match in all competitions). By contrast, this was the Monarchs' 100th regular season match. The team has been around for a while, and it showed in the game - they were able to jump out to an early lead, and then were confident in knowing how to manage the rest of the game to ensure the three points.

Though Las Vegas does have experienced individuals (like Huiqui), they are not yet an experienced team. Take the first goal, for example. The ball was played out to the right back Jaime when there really wasn't any options available to him. He was put under a little bit of pressure, and correctly opted to go back to the goalie, but was just a little bit to slow to get the pass off and the forward just got a toe in. At the same time, the center back assumed that Jaime was just going to take care of it, so he was a second too slow in covering for him, and allowed Velasquez to get goal side.

It's a game of fine margins - just few seconds off, and all of a sudden you're a goal down. Hopefully as the Lights get more familiar with their teammates, they will cut out those mistakes.

2. Open Cup Goals Don't Translate to USL Goals

In midweek, the Lights managed to put 4 goals past FC Tucson to win their U.S. Open Cup match. The positive attacking play brought some of us some hope that the team could bring that same firepower to bear in the league, where to be honest, we have been struggling to put the ball in the net.

Unfortunately, it looks like there is a reason that FC Tucson plays in a division below ours. When the opposing defense stepped up a level in quality yesterday evening, it completely shut down our attack.

3. Goals Change Games

Now I know what you are thinking after that last sentence - but wait, we weren't completely shut down. And of course, as an intelligent observer of soccer, you are to an extent correct - statistically, the Lights had 60% of the possession, and outshot the Monarchs 26 to 8.

But this is one of those times were the stats don't tell the whole story.

Do you remember the USA vs Ghana game in the 2014 World Cup? Clint Dempsey scored within the first minute or so to give the US an early lead, Ghana equalized late, and Brooks turned in a header at the end to win the game. Anyways, the stats from that game look incredibly similar to the Lights-Monarchs game: Ghana had 61% possession and outshot the Lights 21 to 8. Were they better than us? Almost certianly not - they flamed out of the world cup that year with a single point.

The reason they statistically dominated that game was because the U.S. scored early, and had something to defend. We didn't have to attack anymore - so we didn't. Ghana really needed to attack, so they did.

We saw the same thing play out in the Lights-Monarchs game. The Monarchs jumped out to an early lead, and then doubled their advantage only 20 minutes into the game. After that, they didn't really need to attack anymore, so they let the Lights try to break them down.

And to be brutally honest, though we had a lot more shots, none of them (aside from the Ochoa lob that came off the crossbar late on) were really good chances; they kind of just kept us at arm's length for the remainder of the match. I'm not sure any Monarchs fans ever really had their hearts in their mouths.

The good news is that once again, we have a chance to forget our league form as we hit the road to face another lower division side, the Golden State Force, on Wednesday.

Here's to another 4-2 victory then.

-VSB