Chris Wingert is a native of Babylon, NY and played his LIJSL travel soccer as a member of the Commack Soccer Club. He went on to star at St. John the Baptist HS, and then at St. John’s University where he won the 2003 Hermann Trophy as the best collegiate soccer player in the nation. He was the 12th player selected in the 2004 MLS draft, and is now in his 7th season in the league, winning the MLS Cup as a member of Real Salt Lake in 2009.
Chris will be checking in weekly with LIJSoccer.com to update us on his MLS season and RSL’s play in Champions League games.
It’s been a bittersweet few days for Long Islander Chris Wingert and his Real Salt Lake teammates. After losing in the 
championship final of the CONCACAF Champions Cup, they dropped their first MLS decision of the season against Portland, and in the process ended a 35-game unbeaten streak at home. Things seemed to turn around this week with a 1-0 win against Chivas, but it came at a steep price.
“It was good to get back in the winner’s circle,” Wingert said early this week. “But our best player, Javier Morales, went down with an injury on a hard tackle. He had surgery today, which went well by all accounts, but he could still be out for the season. That’s a huge loss and just devastating for our team.”
All you have to do is read the news stories coming out of Salt Lake this week to get a feel for what the injury has meant to Morales’ teammates. Even with better news since the surgery, spirits are still down in the locker room. But as Wingert explained, they don’t have the luxury of lingering too long on the negatives if they hope to get back on the right track as a team.
“In terms of the team, we have to push on,” Wingert said. “We’re obviously all thinking about Javier and doing whatever we can to keep his spirits up, but we have a game against Houston this week, and as harsh as it sounds, we have to be ready to move on.”
The good news is that RSL is particularly deep and talented at the midfield position, so while they don’t have a player on the bench of Morales’ caliber, they do have some players they can lean on.
“We have plenty of capable guys,” Wingert said. “Javier is hard to replace, without question, but we have good depth and some talented guys behind him on the bench. It may take the combined efforts of a few different guys to fill his shoes, but we have a group of guys who can help us transition out of the injury a little easier.”
On the surface, it seems like the team has been hit with a run of bad luck. The win over Chivas must certainly help the psyche of the team, but we asked Wingert what he feels the players have to focus on to get back on the right track.
“There’s really nothing you can do about the injuries,” he said. “They happen. It’s part of the game. But we have to do our best to move past the losses. To do that we all need to focus on the next goal, which is to win games and put ourselves in good position for the MLS Cup.
“We have to be careful that we don’t change what we do now,” continued Wingert. “We have to do the same things on the field with or without Javier. We can’t change our game plan. We can’t change the way the whole team plays because one guy is out, no matter how good he is. We don’t want to ignore the fact that Javier isn’t there – we want to show him that we care about him and we’re thinking about him. But we need to focus on the same things and do what we do.”
This week’s game against the Dynamo poses another challenge for the team.
“We’ll go over specific tactics later in the week, but right now we need to focus on us,” Wingert said. “We won our last game, but we didn’t play great. We have what we like to call a dynamic game plan that involves keeping possession and moving forward. We’ve lost a little bit of that, and we need to get back that desire to show people how good we are. That will start with an improved performance this week.”
Wingert had a few days off after Saturday’s game and actually made his way back home to Long Island for the weekend, which was a nice treat for him and his family.
“It was nice to be home for Mother’s Day, and Monday was my nephew’s birthday, so I got to spend some time with him, too. It was great to be home and see everyone.”
But on Tuesday it was back to Utah where he and RSL will try to keep pushing on.
Questions for Chris
Each week, Chris will answer randomly selected questions from our readers. To submit a question for Chris, e-mail the LIJSoccer.com staff at kenlijsl@ix.netcom.com.
What’s the biggest difference in playing soccer in the MLS? From Alex in Smithtown
The biggest difference in the game is the speed of play, and by that I don’t necessarily mean the guys themselves run faster. At this level, the technical skills are obviously VERY good, but the players also make quicker decisions with the ball and they have the strength, conditioning and skill to carry out those decisions. That’s probably the biggest difference as you move from one level of play to the next; from high school to college, from college to pro, and from pro to international play. The spped of the game changes. The team I love to watch is FC Barcelona. Watch them play on TV if you can. They play faster than anybody in the world. They move the ball so quickly and effectively.