In case you missed it, RSL jumped on the University of South Florida early and cruised to a 2-0 victory over the weekend in its third exhibition match of the preseason, with goalkeepers Nick Rimando and Chris Seitz helping assure a third straight shutout.

Strikers Yura Movsisyan and Clint Mathis scored in the first half-hour -- Movsisyan in the seventh minute, Mathis in the 27th -- and RSL was never threatened.

Coach Jason Kreis had his starters play a bit longer than in the first two exhibitions, keeping most of them on the field until the hour mark before commencing the mass substitutions. Striker Luis Miguel Escalada, defender Tony Beltran and Seitz were the only three to come on at halftime, with rookie midfielders Jean Alexandre and Raphael Cox joining them after the break, along with midfielders Alex Nimo and Brennan Tennelle and a new trialist, striker Lionel Saint Preux.

The team remains in Tampa and plans to meet the University of Tampa on Tuesday, and has added a third game to its 11-day itinerary. RSL will play BK Hacken of the Swedish First Division in the University of Tampa's Tom Fitzgerald Memorial Soccer Festival on Friday.

Now, that's the way to play a preseason game.

After managing but a scoreless draw against a lower-division team in its opener, RSL blew out Shandong Luneng Taishan of China 6-0 in its second preseason exhibition game last night in California, with striker Tino Nunez scoring twice in the first 20 minutes.

Coach Jason Kreis again used almost entirely different lineups in each half; defenders Nat Borchers and David Horst were the only players to go the full 90 minutes. Striker Clint Mathis saw his first game action of the preseason, along with defender Chris Wingert, who returned earlier this week from national team camp. Goalkeeper Nick Rimando also made his first preseason start, after sitting out the opener. Back-up Chris Seitz replaced him for the second half.

A couple of players hoping to win a spot on the roster figured prominently, too, with striker Luis Miguel Escalada scoring the final goal in the 89th minute, and striker Arthur Aghasyan both scoring the fifth goal and assisting Escalada. Striker Yura Movsisyan and midfielder Alex Nimo also scored.

The game that RSL was going to play against UC Irvine this morning has been cancelled, so the team is heading home to take the weekend off before returning to training in Park City next week.

Real Salt Lake will begin an online auction today to raise money to help pay the medical expenses of midfielder Andy Williams' wife, Marcia, who continues to search for a bone-marrow donor in her fight against leukemia.

Throughout the rest of the month, the team will auction 25 jerseys worn by Major League Soccer players, with all the proceeds going to Soccer Unites Utah, the charitable organization created to help support the Williams family and pay for medical treatment.

The team's official blog will preview each jersey before it's put up for auction on eBay, and provide links to the live auctions.

While the players take to the field today for the second exhibition of the preseason, the RSL front office is preparing to put single-game tickets for next season on sale next week.

The team said sales will begin Tuesday at 10 a.m. at Rio Tinto Stadium.

Price range from $15 for upper deck seats to $60 for stadium seats along the sidelines. The team also will offer a "Flex Pack" and a "Family 4-Pack" for individual games.

The Flex Pack starts at $315 and includes 18 ticket vouchers that can be used for any combination of RSL's 15 regular-season home games; seat locations are assigned when the vouchers are redeemed. Meanwhile, the "Family 4 Pack" includes four tickets to any game, four brats, and four drinks for $88.

Goalkeeper Chris Seitz has barely played for RSL since it made him the No. 4 pick of the 2007 MLS SuperDraft.

But that could start changing soon.

Coach Jason Kreis acknowledged that Seitz -- now entering his third season -- is going to need more chances to play league games ahead of incumbent veteran starter Nick Rimando, in order to get better. After all, his periodic international experience and work in RSL exhibitions can only go so far, and the team will have to decide next year whether to exercise an option in his contract to keep him for the 2010 season.

"I probably haven't done a good enough job of that," Kreis said. "I hold up my hand and say I probably haven't been afforded the opportunities that I would have liked to get him more first-team matches in the MLS season. He certainly got a lot of matches in friendlies, and I think those are important, as well. But that will be something that I look to improve upon this year."

Speaking of defenders, versatile Robbie Russell is getting closer to rejoining his teammates after having surgery to repair the rotator cuff in his right shoulder. It was 90 percent torn, he said.

Russell said he's "ahead of schedule" with his rehabilitation, which includes a return to some light activity over the next couple of weeks. But he's not expected to join the team for training until at least its third preseason trip to South Carolina next month.

Russell said he's not certain how much wear and tear contributed the injury, but "definitely had an incident" during RSL's loss to New York in the MLS Western Conference final, when his arm "went numb for awhile" after a collision with a Red Bulls player. Still, he played the entire game before discovering the extent of the problem later.

It wasn't even a month ago that RSL drafted striker Futhi Bhembe of Alabama A&M in the fourth round of the MLS SuperDraft, with general manager Garth Lagerwey saying the team wanted to see whether his prolific goal-scoring ability -- he ranked fifth in Division I last season -- translated to the professional level.

Evidently, it does not.

The team made Bhembe, a native of Swaziland, the first cut of training camp on its day off yesterday, while defender Chris Wingert joined the team for the first time after being released from duty with the U.S. men's national team.

The team was expected to return to two-a-day sessions today and the next two days, before its next exhibition game against Shandong Luneng Taishan of China.

Defender Ian Joy is refreshed and excited to be back in training after finally enjoying some time away from soccer, but confirmed before the start of preseason camp last week that he has been on the lookout for a transfer to Europe.

It's not that he doesn't appreciate RSL.

But the 27-year-old endured a divorce during the offseason, and his ex-wife and daughter have moved back to Germany, where Joy played before joining RSL. Finding a new job over there would allow Joy to be closer to his little girl, so he spent the offseason waiting to see "if a good offer came up." But "the right one just never popped up for me" -- he turned down a few offers, he said -- so Joy expects to start the Major League Soccer season with RSL, while most of the European leagues conclude their seasons.

Of course, that begs the question of whether Joy will last the entire year with RSL, given the seemingly greater opportunity to find a new club during the European offseason this summer.

Meanwhile, though, Joy said "I know I can do a hell of a lot better" than he did last season, when he played 19 games, but suffered some nagging injuries later in the year and strained to hold his starting spot. Part of the reason is that he had become run down after playing nearly 18 months of competitive soccer without a break, by the team last season ended.

Now, he has finally had some rest -- "rest I definitely needed," he said.

Looks like midfielder Will Johnson is going to provide some insights with a blog on MLS Daily this season, and his first one addressed his lifelong adoration of Liverpool as well as RSL's scoreless draw with the Ventura County Fushion over the weekend.

"The effort from all the guys was definitely there but as you would expect for our first game together we lacked a little bit of quality in the final third," Johnson wrote. "We would expect to have come out and been able to beat a PDL team even after only having trained for one week. In reality, on the day, we just were not quite sharp enough."

Meanwhile, defender Chris Wingert probably will be rejoining the team soon, after he was left off the men's national team roster for the Americans' World Cup qualifying game against Mexico on Wednesday. Wingert had recently earned his first cap in an exhibition against Sweden.

In its first exhibition game of the preseason, RSL used different players at every position in each half and tied 0-0 against the PDL's Ventura County Fusion in California last night.

RSL's Will Johnson and Luis Miguel Escalada each threatened with good shots, according to the team blog, but otherwise played the Fusion to a stalemate and allowed no serious chances.

Most notably, coach Jason Kreis paired strikers Yura Movsisyan and Escalada up top in the first half, and Robbie Findley with Tino Nunez in the second. Goalkeepers Chris Seitz and Kyle Reynish shared duties, while the midfield and back line were a mix of veterans and newcomers.

Next up for RSL will be Shandong Luneng Taishan FC, the reigning champion of the Chinese Super League, on Friday.

Training camp evidently is coming along just fine down in California, according to a team spokesman, with no unexpected or earth-shattering developments through the first week and "things starting to pick up a notch, in terms of intensity," in the words of general manager Garth Lagerwey.

Striker Yura Movsisyan scored the only goal in a 60-minute intra-squad scrimmage the other day, and RSL is preparing for its first two exhibitions of the preseason -- against the PDL's Ventura County Fusion on Sunday and then against Shandong Luneng Taishan FC, the reigning champion of the Chinese Super League preparing for Major League Soccer's Pan-Pacific Cup at the Home Depot Center later this month, on Tuesday.

Most of his teammates found their own ways to stay in shape during the offseason, but striker Robbie Findley headed overseas.

The third-year player spent about 10 days with Brondby IF of the Danish Superliga, as a way to stay fit and perhaps make an impression that will help him in the future. "I like playing here in MLS," he said, "but eventually, I'm going to try and go overseas. So what I was trying to do was just try to get a little taste of what it's like over there, get some experience training with a team."

Findley was not offered a contract, but did score twice in a preseason game in which he played.

One of RSL's second-leading scorers last season said he found the style of play vastly different in Denmark. "It's a different game," he said. "They play on the ground a lot more. I'm used to getting balls over the top here. When I first went there, I was looking for it over the top, and it wasn't even an option. I had to adjust a little bit."

General manager Garth Lagerwey said there are good reasons RSL keeps turning to Argentine players such as striker Luis Miguel Escalada, who is among those joining the team during preseason training and could become the fifth player from his South American country to join the team in the past two years:

Connections, and money.

"It's networking," Lagerwey said last week. "And we have good contacts in Argentina. In some ways, it's not any more complicated than that."

The other element, of course, is money.

Team officials believe they can find quality players in South American countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Colombia whom they can afford better than similar players in Europe, where both the high-profile soccer culture and the relative strength of foreign currencies can make them more expensive for American teams like RSL.

"It's like picking the supermarket you want to shop in, and then finding the value," Lagerwey said.

Looks like RSL finally is going to get a look at striker Luis Miguel Escalada, along with several others who are expected to join the team as it begins the first leg of its preseason training camp in California.

The team announced today five new players whom it said will "join us for training over the next couple of weeks," including Escalada and two left-sided veterans in Rachid El-Khalifi and Jorginho Paulista. Goalkeeper Steve Clark and defender Kennedy Owusu-Ansah also are in the mix, but they are younger players who would best be classified as prospects.

While the 22-year-old Escalada has attracted a lot of attention since it became public that coach Jason Kreis had been scouting him in Ecuador, the others are less well-known.

The 29-year-old El-Khalifi can play either in the midfield or up top, and has played his entire nine-year pro career in his native Netherlands, most recently with SC Cambuur of the Dutch Second Division. The 28-year-old Paulista is more of midfielder or defender with an impressive resume that includes stints with Udinese in Italy, PSV Eindhoven in the Netherlands, Boca Juniors in Argentina and both Vasco da Gama and Sao Paulo in his native Brazil.

Team officials have been told that Paulista also has earned a cap with the Brazilian national team, but have not been able to confirm that.

None of the players has signed a contract with RSL, a team official said; rather, coaches are hoping to get a look at them in their own team environment. Any of them could wind up signing (or not) before the March 1 deadline for teams to comply with the Major League Soccer salary cap.

The team also was expected to meet defender Jamison Olave once it arrived in California today. Olave had been delayed in his native Colombia because of visa complications, and was not able to arrive in time for the team's introductory preseason meetings last week and training in Utah over the weekend.