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In what represents the team’s final quick turnaround game, in what has surely been a hectically-congested opening competitive fixture list for quite some time this season, RSL welcome rivals Seattle Sounders to the Beehive State in the Club’s domestic season home opener at America First Field on Saturday.
The concluding week had been earlier earmarked as potentially being definitive of an early quest towards redemption for RSL, in the wake of the preceding weekend’s West Coast debacle.
It has been anything but.
Wednesday’s further capitulation on the continent could yet serve as a pivotal inflection point for the rest of the year, but perhaps somewhat bizarrely so this early, still, in the competitive season. Storylines previews the biggest RSL talking point ahead of Saturday’s MLS return to the Wasatch Front.
A Continental Ousting, Offensive and Defensive Precision… an All-Too-Familiar Story
Real Salt Lake’s journey in the 2025 Champions Cup is at an end. And indeed, in anticlimactic fashion, all too cruelly familiar. Claret-and-Cobalt purists surely will be no strangers to early continental heartbreak – with the agony of the 2015/16 Quarterfinal elimination, and, most especially, the 2012/13 Group Stage disappointment still fresh in the minds of all who’ve survived to tell the tales. This year’s, this author reckons, comfortably takes the cake.
Two games – one draw and one defeat – is all it took. In truth, ‘journey’ is a term perhaps far too grand for the reality of the context of what actually transpired across merely a dual-game campaign across San José, Costa Rica, and Sandy.
A scoreless first leg in the Costa Rican capital was followed up a week later by a second-leg home upset at America First Field as Pablo Mastroeni’s charges, despite a thrilling opening 70-minute display, conspired to squander early first-half domination and succumbed to a terribly late, come-from-behind 1-2 reversal against their Round One opponents.
The season’s continental home opener, in cruel wry fashion, simultaneously also proved to be its continental home finale.
All transgressions do require some form of redress, but RSL’s quest for atonement this week, on the evidence of the fulltime result, at least, has begun with a mere whimper.
Having said, allow this author play the role of devil’s advocate, if only for a moment. Received wisdom, particularly as it pertains to the sport, explains that football, in the end, is a results business. With this, this author duly concurs. But linger on the succeeding context for an added moment.
Throughout preseason, manager Mastroeni consistently waxed lyrical about the team’s need to make better decisions and improve in both penalty boxes. For much of the opening 70 minutes on Wednesday, his players provided exactly that.
Notwithstanding a full-time scoreline which undeniably left so much more to be desired, Mastroeni’s men were almost completely, utterly dominant for much of the midweek game, and indeed, throughout the opening hour and 10 minutes on Wednesday.
RSL’s first goal of the night arrived in the 26th minute courtesy of Ghanaian striker Forster Ajago’s first-time strike, but only after the 23-year-old had already missed an earlier opportunity, just four minutes into the match, from point-blank range in the six-yard box, and midfielders Diogo Gonçalves and Dominik Marczuk proved unable to convert close chances of their own.
By the opening 20 minutes, the hosts had had no less than five shots, and by halftime, that number had risen to 14, but with only three being on target, and a possession statistic of 59.1 percent. In an ideal world, Mastroeni’s men should’ve been at least a couple of goals ahead by then.
The full-time stats were even more mind-boggling. By the end of the contest, RSL had recorded a total of 30 shots – 18 of which were taken from inside the penalty area – with only six of them being on target, and 61 percent possession, compared to the visitors’ six, three, and 39 percent all respectively. Wednesday night, as it showed, clearly was a lesson in precision over sheer quantity.
"The way it works in football is, if you don't score the goals that you should, the pressure on the back line starts mounting," Mastroeni explained after the full-time whistle. "And it takes one poor decision with the ball close to your goal to kill you."
“I look at the scoresheet, and we had 30 shots on goal, and 18 shots from inside the box… I don’t know how you come away from that game with [just] one goal. You gotta be killers, you gotta get numbers inside the box, and you gotta be clinical. That game should’ve been put away in the first half, and even in the second… so it’s a bit frustrating from that perspective because I thought we played a really good game.”
Midfielder Lachlan Brook shared his head coach’s sentiments:
"I think we dominated the game and sort of let it get away from us, which is disappointing. We know that we are better than that, and, luckily enough, there's always another game that we can prove that."
In that, at least, the Australian is proven right. Indeed, Saturday perhaps couldn’t come any quicker for Mastroeni’s men, in need of a spark to their season, against a Sounders side enjoying a good run of form with two wins and a draw in their opening three games of the season.
Whilst this author refrains from affording excuses or absolving the team from the disappointment of the full-time result, judging on the basis of pure technical performance, at least, Wednesday represented RSL’s best showing of the season thus far, albeit from a currently small existing sample size. However, the team’s goalscoring struggles continue to persist and represent a crucial point of reform if the club is to make any gain(s) on the pitch this year.
RSL have found converting chances so far this campaign difficult to come by – with only a solitary goal scored in its opening three games – against a Seattle Sounders side who have found the back of the net eight on separate occasions across their own three games. Something, surely, will have to give for Mastroeni’s men if they are to come away with a victory. And this represents the greatest obstacle and theme of addressal heading into the coming weeks.
Last season, RSL played to a 2-0 win and a 1-1 draw in two meetings against the Sounders, with midfielder Diego Luna and the now departed Andres Gomez making up for all three goals scored.
The midweek Champions Cup fixture presented an opportunity for atonement. It was squandered, with the consequence being continental elimination, and with it also went the chance for redemption: long gone and never to return again this season – perform or live with the enduring consequences.
Saturday, and every game hence, brings with it no longer a chance for atonement or redress, but an opportunity to fight for the season, pride and honor for the badge.
Lest the ire of the faithful extend beyond its bounds, it is one that need be utilized.
