Bear with me on this one, it’s only slightly long-winded.
There is a branded mural painted on one of the many executive office walls within Real Salt Lake’s training base in Herriman, which, in customary aesthetic fashion, outlines what the club defines as its “Core Cultural Values,” numbering five in total, and all arranged in an annular graphic encircling a familiar image of the RSL crest.
At the top of the circle, in clear capitalized letters, first comes PRIDE, explained as: “the duty to champion and defend the idea of the club.” It comes with the prerogative.
Moving downwards approaching the middle, each on opposite sides of the circle, then appear — on the right — COMMUNITY — and the left — INTEGRITY — both at equidistant angles, splitting the entire single round image into two giant semicircles.
Finally, at the foot of this notorious circle, come the final two principles: HARMONY, and then lastly and most pertinently to our story, INDUSTRY, the latter of which is relevantly bestowed with the description — “all great difficulties are met with great and focused action.”
Values… standards… principles… all five stand as perpetual guiding pillars, each one individually crucial for shaping and informing the actions, responses, and behaviors of the club and its representatives. But, at the very bottom of the graphic, the final entrant, INDUSTRY, certainly in the context of the club’s history, seems to have largely typified and encapsulated much of RSL’s 22-year existence, moreso than the rest.
“All great difficulties are met with great and focused action,” it elucidates.
It is a mantra and reserve that the club has had to consistently draw on, time and time again during bleak periods throughout its history, and one which it must now muster the courage to call upon once more.
One word. Three syllables (INDUSTRY) — and with a few literary begotten offsprings over the years to boot: cue resilience, bounceback, fightback… all for equal measure. Indeed, when one considers the current state of affairs, it is perhaps difficult to think of a greater time when such mentality will be needed than the present moment. But, then again, mountains are there to be climbed, aren’t they?
In a painfully roundabout way, it serves as yet another foundation for this week’s edition of Storyline renderings. (See, only slightly, slight chuckle).
RSL next welcome familiar foes, title-chasing Vancouver Whitecaps for a royal rumble at America First Field on Saturday, for what will be a second domestic meeting between both teams this season and in the space of merely three weeks.
As is customary, our author elucidates the prevailing atmosphere and pertinent plotline ahead of yet another domestic matchup.
Second time’s the charm?
When Pablo Mastroeni’s charges lock horns with Vancouver again this weekend, it will represent the second time RSL have faced the British Columbia club in its last four games, and third time in its previous 18 stretching back to the end of last season. Only Minnesota United have faced RSL as many times in that latter timespan, whilst San Diego FC remain the only other club to have faced RSL home and away thus far this season.
Thus, Saturday night’s clash reconvenes two teams now sufficiently familiar with each other at this juncture of the campaign and consequently brings into focus the contrasting fortunes at play across both clubs. The juxtaposition is somewhat even more pronounced when one considers the landscape the last time both sides met at America First Field, when RSL were coming off its most successful season in modern times and Vancouver, under then-head-coach Vanni Sartini, had barely squeaked into the Playoffs, having only just, after a nomadic 2024.
2025, however, has engineered a flip of the script.
When Vancouver travel to America First Field on Saturday, they arrive no longer as a side merely content for an equal or respectable share of the spoils, but now as those who would be kings, against an RSL side struggling to rediscover any sliver of its previously best form.
When both sides last met at BC Place at the start of May, midfielder Diego Luna’s stoppage-time penalty helped halve an initial two-goal deficit and produce a more palatable 2-1 final scoreline than the balance of performance suggested. In the end, it was a defeat, but a kindness all the same.
Caps forward Jayden Daniels proved RSL’s infernal tormentor-in-chief in a game so technically one-sided that, by the second half, the winger’s devilishly skilled dummy and turn of pace — to easily beat his man and draw a foul right on the edge of the RSL penalty area — elicited a kind of chorused, knowing response from the audience, in a manner that almost felt like a wink to the fourth wall, with the hosts irrepressibly dominant and reveling in their superiority. And everyone knew it.
On Saturday, familiarity presents the avenue for RSL, for a twist in the tale, and a spanner in the works — “Not on our turf!” We cry. “And not in our house!”
That sense of pride surely still counts for something, does it not? Needs must.
Recent results for Vancouver, however, have scarcely been the most favorable, with three successive draws coming in each of their games since the aftermath of both sides’ last meeting, whilst two stalemates and a defeat in the Rocky Mountain Cup derby last time out since then sets up a contest RSL will be desperate to achieve a positive result in to cull the storm.
RSL will hope that desperation can serve as fuel for its goals, but it all adds that bit more jeopardy and spark to what already promises to be a nail-biting affair, with both sides seemingly unabashed in their means and desires for Saturday.
The last time RSL played a home-and-away domestic leg against an opponent in relatively quick timing this season, Mastroeni’s men succumbed to a 3-1 home defeat to San Diego FC in March, before an away win by the same scoreline at Snapdragon Stadium the following month — a perhaps heartening sliver of history for those who might prefer a slice of optimistic superstition accompanying their statistic.
Familiarity, it is sometimes said, breeds contempt. It should (for this game, for these players, against these opponents) — for RSL’s own sake. If for nothing else but PRIDE: the duty to champion and defend the idea of the club — the circle’s first offering.
Mastroeni, more than most, will surely hope so.
