HERRIMAN, Utah (Fri., April 4, 2025) – Real Salt Lake (2-4-0, 6 points, 11th West / 22nd Shield) returns home Saturday afternoon, hosting the reigning MLS Cup Champions LA Galaxy (0-4-2, 2 points, 13th West / 27th Shield) in a 2:30p MT kickoff at America First Field, where RSL boasts a nearly .700 winning percentage in its 16 years in Sandy. Saturday’s match will be available via Apple TV+ / MLS Season Pass, with Josh Eastern & Jamie Watson (ENG) on the call, as are Diego Pessolano & Daniel Chapela (SPN).
Prior to Saturday’s festivities, RSL playmaker and emerging U.S. Men’s National Team starlet Diego Luna will be honored by the Utah Sports Commission in a Friday evening ceremony at the Governor’s State of Sport Awards downtown as the latest Male Professional Athlete of the Year honoree. Luna – also the reigning 2024 MLS Young Player of the Year – earned an assist as well as the game-winning goal for RSL in its last win, a 2-1 victory on March 15 in Houston.
Since Luna’s game-winning header deep into first-half stoppage time in South Texas, RSL has now gone scoreless in five consecutive halves, dropping a shorthanded 0-1 decision to FC Dallas at home on March 22 and falling 2-0 in Minnesota last weekend. Australian striker Ari Piol – controversially ejected in the 23rd minute of that Dallas loss – returns to eligibility this weekend, while Spanish rookie Jesus Barea could potentially make his home MLS debut this weekend after appearing in the final 45 minutes during the icy monsoon in St. Paul on Saturday.
Now, for a fifth time in the first nine games across all competitions in 2025, RSL has an opportunity to improve upon one of the hallmarks of RSL under Mastroeni’s guidance, specifically its ability to bounce back from losses, dropping just 12 back-to-back scenarios across all competitions in Pablo’s 147 overall games managed since August, 2021.
This year at America First Field, RSL owns just one win – 2-0 over Seattle in its MLS opener – and three losses across all competitions, dropping two matches with stoppage time concessions to Herediano and San Diego, prior to its 10-player effort against FC Dallas. On top of the rough start, RSL now welcomes a winless LA Galaxy team to Sandy, one which has won in each of its last two MLS reg. season visits to America First Field, in 2023 and 2024. RSL did defeat the Galaxy on Utah soil in the 2023 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup Quarterfinal, 3-2, in June of that year.
The Minnesota loss last week dropped RSL’s 2025 road mark across all competitions to 1-2-1 this season under the guidance of fifth-year Head Coach Pablo Mastroeni, with each of the last two seasons marking the Claret-and-Cobalt’s best road campaigns in team history. The 2023 side posted an 11W-8L-5T away mark across all competitions, a record which includes both that year’s Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup Semifinal loss to Houston, and its road loss and elimination draw in the first and third games of the teams’ 2023 Audi MLS Cup Playoff series on the Shell Energy Stadium turf.
A year ago, Mastroeni’s men registered the second-most road points in RSL history, with a 5W-4L-8T MLS reg. season mark, one which does NOT includes its heartbreaking, multi-goal Leagues Cup elimination loss to the Dynamo following a home win over Atlas FC.
Despite falling already this year against both Herediano and San Diego with early first-half scores, during the Pablo Mastroeni era, RSL still boasts a 36W-6L-12T mark when scoring first.
During each of Pablo’s previous three full seasons at the RSL helm, the Club has increased its annual point total (47 in 2022, 50 in 2023 and 59 last year), while increasing its Western Conference table position as well (7th in 2022, 5th in 2023 and 3rd last year). The 2025 campaign features RSL’s pursuit of a Conference-best fifth consecutive postseason berth, a seventh in the last eight seasons and its 15th in the last 18 years.
Mastroeni earned his 50th win across all competitions with RSL in a 4-3 decision last June at Kansas City, with his 3rd reg. season win this season marking his 50th with RSL. During his entire MLS coaching career – which includes the 2014-17 years at Colorado – former U.S. World Cup stalwart Mastroeni has amassed 98 wins, 108 losses and 74 draws across all competitions for the Rocky Mountain clubs.
This season, Real Salt Lake returns nearly 21,000 collective minutes played from last year’s roster, as the Club looks to build upon a record-setting 2024 campaign, as last year saw RSL advance to the MLS Cup Playoffs for a fourth consecutive occasion, the sixth time in seven seasons (2020 the lone exception), and for the 14th time in the last 17 seasons since first qualifying in 2008 (2015, 2017 the other outliers). The 2024 MLS regular season reached an all-time high of 59 points for RSL, which finished third in the Western Conference and sixth overall in the 29-team MLS shield race, while also establishing a new all-time scoring high of 65 goals.
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