HERRIMAN, Utah (Fri., April 11, 2025) – Real Salt Lake (3-4-0, 9 points, 10th West / 19th Shield) kick off a heavy upcoming road stretch with a trip to Tennessee this weekend, facing off against Nashville SC (3-3-1, 10 points, 9th East / 17th Shield) in a 6:30p MT kickoff at Geodis Park. Saturday’s match will be available via Apple TV+ / MLS Season Pass, with Mark Followill & Warren Barton (ENG) on the call, as are Pablo Ramirez & Jesus Bracamontes (SPN).
Last week, RSL snapped its two-game slide with an elite performance led by RSL playmaker and emerging U.S. Men’s National Team starlet Diego Luna, who scored a pair of goals just five minutes apart midway through the first half to lead RSL to a comfortable 2-0 home win over the LA Galaxy. Luna’s brace – just his second in MLS and his first since mid-July, 2023 – gives him three goals and an assist in his last three RSL matches, snapping a five-half scoreless run for the Claret-and-Cobalt.
RSL earned its second clean sheet of the season in Saturday’s 2-0 win, an identical scoreline to its home victory over Seattle back on March 1. Newcomer GK Rafael Cabral and Homegrown DF Justen Glad remain the lone two RSL players to have appeared in every minute of the Club’s seven 2025 MLS contests, while Cabral also played all 180 minutes of RSL’s Concacaf Champions Cup action to kick off the season.
RSL boss Pablo Mastroeni arrives in Nashville seeking his 100th career coaching win, including the 2014-17 years with Rocky Mountain Cup rival Colorado Rapids. The former U.S. World Cup stalwart has now amassed 99 wins, 108 losses and 74 draws across all competitions for the Utah/Denver-based sides. Last June in Kansas City, Mastroeni earned his 50th win across all competitions with RSL in a wild 4-3 road decision, with last week’s 2-0 reg. season win over LA Galaxy marking his 50th MLS victory with RSL.
Last week against LA Galaxy, RSL improved to 37W-6L-12T when scoring first during the Mastroeni era, despite falling already this year against both Herediano and San Diego with early first-half scores. Saturday, Australian striker Ari Piol – controversially ejected in the 23rd minute of the Dallas loss on March 22 – returned to action, starting and playing 78 minutes after missing the 0-2 loss at Minnesota, while Spanish rookie Jesus Barea made his home MLS debut last weekend for the final 21 minutes after appearing in the final 45 minutes during the icy monsoon in St. Paul on March 29.
For the third time in five opportunities across the first nine games across all competitions in 2025, RSL embodied one of the hallmarks of the Mastroeni era, displaying its ability to rebound from a loss, RSL dropping just 12 back-to-back scenarios across all competitions in Pablo’s 148 overall games managed since August, 2021.
RSL’s trip to Nashville this weekend kicks off a run that sees four of its next five contests played away, and seven of its next 10 overall to be played on the road through the end of May. RSL dropped a 2-0 decision in its lone previous trip to Geodis Park in Nashville, back in 2023. Saturday marks the fourth all-time meeting between the sides, with RSL boasting a win and a draw in two matches played on Utah soil in 2022/23.
The Minnesota loss in the team’s last road trip dropped RSL’s 2025 road mark across all competitions to 1-2-1 / 4 points 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.
This year at America First Field, RSL now owns two wins – both by 2-0 scorelines over long-time rivals LA Galaxy and Seattle – against three losses in 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.
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.
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.
