Greatness, it is said, comes in spades, this one wears a pair of gloves and an extra-long sleeve for added measure.
On Saturday, May 3, 2025, at the National Soccer Hall of Fame headquarters in Frisco, Texas, Nick Rimando’s world stands still.
In truth, today’s recognition had been long forthcoming. It was formally announced back in December that the RSL and USMNT goalkeeping legend would be honored with an induction into the National Soccer Hall of Fame 2025 class, with the official ceremonial entry date set five months forward for May 3. From that confirmation, it had merely been the case of a slowly ticking clock, counting down each passing minute every hour, day-by-day, month-by-month, until his fated enshrining.
And on Saturday, at the organization’s premier facility in North Texas, Rimando was finally made immortal.
“I’m really grateful, really honored,” an emotional Rimando shared with the media a week prior to his official induction. “If you look at the past players in the Hall of Fame now, I never really thought I’d be amongst those names, so this is truly special to me, my family, and my kids. I’m just very grateful.”
A product of the UCLA Bruins men's soccer program, Rimando enjoyed a lustrous career spanning 20 years in Major League Soccer. He joined Real Salt Lake via trade in 2007, where he’d spend the majority and remainder of his career, and would truly establish himself as the greatest goalkeeper in MLS history and one of the greatest in history of U.S. Soccer.
After a breakout collegiate journey at UCLA, Rimando began his professional career in 2000, when he was drafted to join the now-defunct Miami Fusion, where he made 47 appearances before his eventual departure.
At the end of his time with the Fusion, after the 2001 season, Rimando joined D.C. United, where the then-young goalkeeper truly began to make a name for himself. The now 45-year-old would go on to make a total of 98 appearances across a period of four years with the capital club, in the process making up a member of the team which won the 2004 MLS Cup title – the club’s fourth-ever top-flight crown and the first of the talented goalkeeper’s career, the first stop on his pathway/journey towards greatness – but this was only just the start.
In December 2006, Rimando joined RSL for the first time before then being allowed to depart for the New York Red Bulls, in a bizarre turn of trade events, but his second coming in March 2007 would set the stage for his crowning.
Following his return to RSL, Rimando wasted little time, quickly establishing himself as a pillar for the Club – as well as the community – and in 2009 played a starring role in the Club’s first and only MLS Cup crown, won on the back of a stellar performance in a penalty shootout victory against star-studded favorites LA Galaxy, which earned him the honor of being named MLS Cup MVP that year.
Rimando’s exploits on the pitch weren’t confined merely to the Wasatch Front either. In 2002, he made his first senior cap with the USMNT in a match against El Salvador, and following a few years of international wilderness, his excellent performances for RSL in 2009 earned him a way back into the national fold. In 2014, Rimando, alongside RSL Legend Kyle Beckerman, made Claret-and-Cobalt history as the first players from the Club to represent the United States at a World Cup during the year’s showpiece edition in Brazil.
At club level, Rimando continued to excel and endure, even as the team around him kept changing, and, in 2019, during a 1-0 away defeat to San Jose, celebrated his 500th regular-season game in the MLS, becoming the first player in League history to achieve such a feat.
Throughout his playing career at America First Field (formerly Rio Tinto Stadium), Rimando amassed an astonishing 369 appearances across a 13-year stint for RSL. Across his career entirety in MLS, the former no.1 made a total of 514 appearances (all 514 of them starts!) , 46, 336 minutes, 1,705 saves, 223 wins, and 153 clean sheets, pulling the hat on his career as Major League Soccer’s all-time leader in each category.
He also proved an eight-time MLS All-Star with RSL (2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2019) and won the league's Save of the Year award three times in 2012, 2013, and 2019, in addition to both his MLS cup triumphs and two Supporters Shield crowns (Miami Fusion, 2001), (D.C. United, 2006).
At the international level, Rimando earned 22 total caps with the U.S. Men's National Team, in addition to being part of the 2014 FIFA World Cup squad, and helped the U.S. win the CONCACAF Gold Cup in 2013.
As the records kept falling, the plaudits kept rising, and as a final act before his retirement, he was also further bestowed, near the end of 2019, by the city of Sandy with his own street name outside America First Field – with the City renaming the former loop around the stadium to Rimando Way in honor of the club’s legendary goalkeeper and forbearer.
By the time he retired in 2019 at age 40, Rimando had duly earned the title of the greatest goalkeeper in MLS history. Standing at a diminutive 5-foot-9 and 185 pounds, Rimando never appeared as the most domineering or towering of goalkeeping figures, yet that all proved non-consequential to the man who would go on to forge his own path and etch his name in stone into the enduring annals of American Soccer.
“ I was 10 years old and our goalkeeper on the team got hurt, and we didn't have an extra goalkeeper like you do now on every team, so I was volunteered to go in the net,” the now 45-year-old shared in a recent interview recanting his earliest foray into the position. “It was less running and I actually had a pretty good game that day without any kind of training.
“Our goalkeeper was out for an extended amount of time, so I stepped into that role back then and I enjoyed it. One of the kids on the team’s dad was a hockey goalkeeper, so that was my first trainer – learning angles from a hockey goalkeeper – and when the field players were playing, I was with the dad just doing extra work in goal, learning angles and so I just kind of fell in love with the position.
“I was always a field player. In high school, I was a field player. Even when Sigi Schmid came and recruited me, I was playing in the field – not in goal, where he wanted to recruit me. So that was a little bit of a weird situation for him.
“So I think I had a bit of an advantage just from playing on the field. I knew what players think – what forwards think when they're shooting the ball, what midfielders think when they're playing through balls. And then, jumping back into that position when I was in college, I felt I was able to read the game a little bit more – read the attackers – and obviously, be good with my feet as the modern game grew. Now, you need your goalkeepers to play with their feet, be comfortable with their feet, and have defenders feel comfortable with you back there. So I was able to bring that to my game, which I think the coaches enjoyed.”
After hanging up his boots in 2019, Rimando returned to Real Salt Lake in 2021, where he currently serves as an RSL Academy and Real Monarchs (MLS NextPro) goalkeeping coach.
Rimando is also very well-known and much beloved for his community efforts which he has continued to be passionately involved in – aiding several club-sponsored and other related outreach initiatives – now during his contemporary stint as a technical staff.
With an everlasting legacy of dependability, consistency, and durability which spanned two decades, and 13 years on the Wasatch Front, Rimando’s Hall of Fame induction should certainly come as no shock and simply serves to further underline his status as one of the nation’s enduring sporting icons.
Now forever immortalized with a legend that surely will echo through the annals for most of the passage of time, when the holy trinity of RSL’s history is engraved in bronze, few – if any – will discount Rimando as deserving of a place, perhaps right next to Beckerman, on the historical podium.
A legend of American soccer.
Greatness comes in spades, this one wore a pair of gloves and an extra long sleeve for added measure.
Long live Nick Rimando. Long live the Wall of the Wasatch.
