Real Salt Lake opens the MLS playoffs looking to take down LAFC — on the road — in the knockout round

Herriman • Real Salt Lake is in the playoffs. Now, the team has to do something about it.

RSL faces the Los Angeles Football Club on Thursday at Banc of California Stadium in Los Angeles, Calif., in the knockout round. Win, and Real advances to play Sporting Kansas City in the Western Conference semifinals. Lose, and they’re right back where many thought they were before the L.A. Galaxy lost to the Houston Dynamo.

“In one way, I’m happy that we made the playoffs this year,” forward Albert Rusnák said Tuesday after training. “But in the other way, I feel like if we get knocked out on Thursday, it’ll mean nothing.”

RSL has quite a task ahead. LAFC beat Real by a combined 7-1 score in the regular season, and have two players in Carlos Vela and Diego Rossi who have 26 goals and 22 assists between them.

RSL coach Mike Petke said Monday that the team will be an underdog against LAFC. The website FiveThirtyEight agrees, giving Real only a 29 percent chance of moving on to the semifinals.

But some players aren’t putting much stock into the first two games against LAFC.

“We feel like we haven’t shown our best against them yet,” midfielder Kyle Beckerman said Monday. “They haven’t seen what we are really capable of. So I think all of us really were excited when we saw it was them.”

Real lost 5-1 in its first game against LAFC, but that was eight months ago. The most recent game between them was a 2-0 road loss for RSL on Aug. 15.

In a way, Rusnák thinks, those two losses could end up benefitting RSL. He alluded to LAFC possibly feeling overconfident due the previous two games.

“In some ways I think it’s good we lost to them twice,” Rusnák said. “Maybe they’ll feel they’ve done it twice, they’ll do it a third time. But I can guarantee you this will be the hardest game of the three that we played them.”

Midfielder Damir Kreilach thinks LAFC’s recent loss puts more pressure on it to win.

“We have nothing to lose,” Kreilach said.

RSL needed help from Houston in order to make the playoffs. Had the Dynamo lost to the Galaxy, Real would be sitting out and having to answer tougher questions about what went wrong.

Instead, it gets to figure out a way to replicate the improbable run it made in 2009, when Real won the MSL Cup after barely making it to the postseason. Only three players remain from the title year: Beckerman, keeper Nick Rimando and Tony Beltran, who is recovering from knee surgery and has not played all season.

For many on the team, Thursday will be their first taste of an MLS postseason. Even seasoned International veterans like Kreilach and Rusnák have never played in a playoff game. It’s Kreilach’s first MLS season, and Rusnák was on last year’s RSL team that missed the playoffs by one point.

But Corey Baird, who some around the league have already tapped as Rookie of the Year, is not worried that he will play in his first playoff game. He said with every point mattering down the stretch of the season, RSL got an introduction to playoff pressure and is already in that mindset.

“Getting used to that pressure is always a good thing, that kind of environment is a game,” Baird said. “I think that’s definitely helped us.”

With both RSL and LAFC coming into Thursday’s matchup having lost their final games of the season, neither are playing their best soccer. Real lost to Portland back on Oct. 21, and LAFC lost to Sporting KC on Sunday.

In its last three games, LAFC has conceded at least two goals. Real has only one win in its last six games.

Defender Brooks Lennon said RSL needs to be cleaner in all aspects of its game, especially with keeping possession. He felt the team collectively gave away too many balls in “cheap areas” in its last game against the Portland Timbers.

“If we just sharpen everything up, we’ll be alright,” Lennon said.

LAFC, however, is the only team between the two that will be on short rest. RSL did not play in the final game of the season.

“Hopefully there’s times where we can get them and put them on the ropes where they are feeling the Sunday game,” Beckerman said. “And then when we do that, hopefully we can score and really change the game.”

Beckerman said RSL is now playing with house money. Petke agreed. But the feeling around the team is that it has a prime opportunity to do something not many thing it can.

“Eventually this could be the last game for us,” Rusnák said. “Obviously none of us want it to be that way. But we have to play like it is the final because every game from now on is like it’s a final.”