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  • Real Salt Lake Getting Spark From Movsisyan

    REAL SALT LAKE GETTING SPARK FROM MOVSISYAN

    USA Today
    Nov 7 2008

    For Real Salt Lake's Yura Movsisyan, there's no time like the
    last minute. The 21-year-old striker scored in the 90th minute of
    the regular-season finale at the Colorado Rapids to put Real in the
    playoffs. Then he scored in the 90th minute of last week's playoff
    game against Chivas USA to give Real a 1-0 lead heading into Saturday
    night's second leg of the two-leg aggregate-goals series (Fox Soccer
    Channel, 10:30 ET).

    Getting the job done late is appropriate for a player who puts in
    extra work after practice and didn't even take up the game seriously
    until age 12, when many serious youth players are already funneling
    into elite programs.

    His late start was a result of growing up an outsider overseas. When
    the Soviet Union splintered, Movsisyan lived in Azerbaijan. But he'd
    rather not talk about that country.

    "I'm Armenian, and that's what I want people to know," Movsisyan says.

    FIND MORE STORIES IN: Utah | Soviet Union | ETrade Financial Corp. |
    East | Texans | Pasadena | Chicago Fire | CD Chivas USA | New England
    Revolution | Azerbaijan | New York Red Bulls | Columbus Crew |
    Colorado Rapids | Kansas City Wizards | Houston Dynamo | Salt Lake |
    HDNet | Jason Kreis | Real | Zach Thornton | City College | Houston
    TV | Movsisyan Upon moving to the USA at 12, he found his game and
    a tight-knit Armenian community. Those ties helped lead him from
    the Kansas City Wizards, who took him fourth in the 2006 draft from
    Pasadena (Calif.) City College, to Salt Lake, where he joined fellow
    Armenian Alecko Eskandarian.

    "The staple of the Armenian culture is that we're loving people but
    we're very resilient," Eskandarian says. "We're always accepting of
    our own as family even if we don't know them."

    Movsisyan, not playing much for Kansas City at the time, shyly didn't
    approach Eskandarian when his team met Eskandarian's in 2006. But
    Eskandarian, then with D.C. United, sought him out to exchange jerseys
    and phone numbers. "When I had a chance to meet him, a fellow Armenian,
    it was something special," Movsisyan says.

    Eskandarian has since moved on and will be on the other side of the
    playoff matchup with Chivas USA. But another reason Movsisyan welcomed
    the move to Utah was to learn from coach Jason Kreis, who scored 108
    goals in his MLS career.

    "We really knew nothing about him, so I had to look at video clips
    of him and liked what I saw," Kreis says. "I was willing to take a
    little bit of a gamble."

    Kreis, who has a talented corps of strikers on the roster, has worked
    with Movsisyan on finishing skills and tactics, teaching him how to
    combine with other attackers. Yet Movsisyan's raw talent led to the
    goal against Chivas USA, an audacious back-heel flick that wrong-footed
    goalkeeper Zach Thornton.

    "It was all instinct," Movsisyan says. "You never really know where the
    ball's going to go because you're not actually facing the goal. ... It
    was very difficult for a goalkeeper to read what you're doing."

    Though that goal came against his team, Movsisyan's friend likes the
    young striker's approach.

    "He'll try things that if they don't work, he's going to have a
    bunch of guys yelling at him, but if they do work, everyone loves
    you," Eskandarian says. "He's not afraid to take those risks. That's
    something I admire from him, and I'm glad it's working out."

    Sellout expected:

    The Houston Dynamo, the West's top seed, has roughly 6,000 seats left
    for Sunday's game against the New York Red Bulls (Telefutura, 3 ET).

    "We have an attitude, internally, that the playoffs need to sell out,"
    Dynamo chief operating officer Chris Canetti says.

    The team worked with the NFL's Texans on the timing of their press
    conferences this week, ensuring the presence of every Houston TV
    station, English and Spanish, at the Dynamo gathering, Canetti says.

    The first game was a 1-1 tie.

    Eastern playoffs:

    The top-seeded Columbus Crew also is tied 1-1. The Crew will host
    Kansas City on Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET, HDNet). The New England
    Revolution and Chicago Fire met Thursday night in the other East
    matchup. The teams played to a 0-0 draw in the first leg, leaving
    injury-riddled New England a difficult task in Chicago.
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