HOUSTON (Fri., March 14, 2025) – Real Salt Lake (1-2-0, 3 points, 10th West ) arrives in South Texas Saturday night looking to snap a nine-game road winless run against the Dynamo, with a 6:30p MT kickoff at Shell Energy Stadium near downtown Houston. RSL has not won in downtown Houston since the 2018 campaign, dropping several recent games here in the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, Leagues Cup, the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs as well as regular-season contests.
Saturday’s match will be available via Apple TV+ / MLS Season Pass, with Mark Rogondino and Heath Pearce (ENG) on the call, as are Diego Pessolano & Daniel Chapela (SPN).
As announced earlier this week, RSL playmaker Diego Luna will join the U.S. Men’s National Team following this game in preparation for Thursday’s Concacaf Nations League Semifinal against Panama in Los Angeles; should the U.S. advance, Luna will likely miss next Saturday’s home match against visiting FC Dallas at America First Field. The Sat., March 22 tilt in Sandy will kick off at 7:30p MT, with tickets available via www.RSL.com/tickets.
In its lone previous MLS road contest this season, RSL fell, 4-0, at San Jose Earthquakes back on Feb. 22 in the Club’s 21st season opener. Three days prior, RSL drew 0-0 at Herediano in San José, Costa Rica, in the road leg of its first-round series for this year’s Concacaf Champions Cup.
Under the guidance of fifth-year Head Coach Pablo Mastroeni, each of the last two seasons have been 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.
Yet again, for the third time in the first six games across all competitions in 2025, RSL is afforded the opportunity to improve upon one of the hallmarks of RSL under Mastroeni’s guidance, specifically its ability to bounce back from losses, dropping just 11 back-to-back scenarios across all competitions in Pablo’s 144 overall games managed since August, 2021.
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 35W-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, 107 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.
