Dearest gentle readers welcome back to storylines.
Grab your tickets, get your popcorn ready, and sound the battle cry! It’s playoffs time! And your Claret-and-Cobalt once again go marching in.
The Beginning of the End: The Concluding Hurdle
After a little more than a week of rest, recovery, and preparation, RSL return to footballing action midweek for the opening fixture of its 2024 MLS Cup playoff campaign, a Round One, best-of-three showdown against visiting Minnesota United FC at home Tuesday at America First Field in what certainly promises to be an enthralling affair.
Pablo Mastroeni’s charges head into this crucial contest on the back of a positive outing last time out, a momentum-building, 2-1 comeback victory at home against Vancouver Whitecaps FC as the icing on the cake of a successful regular-season campaign and cementing continental football for the Club next year via the 2025 CONCACAF Champions Cup for the first time in a near decade.
With the MLS domestic calendar now successfully navigated, Mastroeni’s men now fully shift focus towards what is expected to be a grueling, unforgiving playoff crusade. Excitement is surely afoot and the stakes are high in this season’s conclusive hurdle, and in this iteration of storylines, we preview some of the most compelling narratives and information to consider ahead of this week’s duel with the Loons.
Storylines
- Your team, your house, your Claret-and-Cobalt: RSL head into the first game of its playoff series on home turf with the full force of America First Field behind the team in its ultimate bid to break the club’s 15-year MLS Cup drought, against a Minnesota side which has never gotten the better of RSL in MLS competition away from home.
- Luna poised to continue good form: Playmaker Diego Luna looks to continue his recent stunning form with fellow attackers Dominik Marczuk and Anderson Julio primed to follow suit. On the other end, Captain Chicho Arango will be hoping to finally end his goal drought.
Where to Watch
You can catch RSL vs Minnesota on Apple TV’s MLS Season Pass right here or take in the euphoric America First Field experience by getting your tickets today here
Kickoff is at 7:00 p.m. MT on Tuesday, Oct. 29.
The Deep Dive
- Your team, your house, your Claret-and-Cobalt: RSL head into the first game of its playoff series on home turf with the full force of America First Field behind the team in its ultimate bid to break the club’s 15-year MLS Cup drought, against a Minnesota side which has never gotten the better of RSL in MLS competition away from home.
‘Your team, your house, your Claret-and-Cobalt.’ Need we say more? This author, at the very least, thinks not. But for the sake of the narrative, let us add a bit more information to the discussion.
RSL enjoyed a generally positive 2024 domestic season. That much is a fact and has been repeatedly emphasized loudly and appropriately over the course of the year, an unprecedented campaign achieved off the back of collectively impressive player performances, and consistently punctuated by historic individual feats of skill and bravery, goalscoring heroics, superstar performers, young prodigies, and plenty more all too lengthy to fully detail. Indeed 2024’s was a campaign so fraught with such seemingly endless storylines, accurately keeping track of them all might as well have become a full-time occupation.
Yet impressive as all of that was, purists would argue, it pales in comparison to the actuality of attaining collective silverware, the possible reality of even more tangible success, and the chance of bringing an MLS Cup title to America First Field for the first time in a decade and a half. The real challenge, as is often said, starts now, and this week the team’s journey to proverbial MLS immortality reaches a definitive junction.
On Tuesday, RSL head into the opening game of its eagerly anticipated postseason crusade against an in-form Minnesota United side with better circumstances than it could even have wished for - with the support of its home base and the familiar reassurances a sold-out America First Field might typically confer. Make no mistake, this is war, us versus them in front of a packed Riot, and one RSL simply must win.
This season, Mastroeni’s men boast the third-best home record in the Western Conference, and fourth-best in the entire League, behind only both LA teams and Inter Miami, with 11 wins, 38 goals scored, 36 points, and 2.12 PPG (points per game) from 17 matches, while also collecting at least a point in five straight MLS home games. Tuesday presents another opportunity to craft yet another magical narrative in the general storyline of RSL’s 2024 season - as much a result of the intense, formidable atmosphere supporters create at America First Field as it is the players’ performances themselves, of that there can be no doubt.
The Claret-and-Cobalt also remain undefeated in Sandy in playoff competition in over a decade, with the club’s last postseason loss at home coming all the way back in the 2012 Conference Semifinal during a 1-0 setback to the Seattle Sounders. RSL have also never lost an MLS game at home against Minnesota since the Loons’ 2016 arrival in the domestic top flight..
Mastroeni’s men also arrive at this fixture riding the wave of a positive run of form from its last few games, the team recovering from a less-than-impressive regular-season resumption at the end of August to complete the calendar with consecutive wins in its final two matches, as well as three of its final six, culminating in an active stretch of six games unbeaten to conclude the campaign.
RSL’s last result, a hard-fought victory against Vancouver where it was forced to fight back from a goal down in the final 30 minutes, served as a prime showcase of the skill, grit, and determination that have defined and constituted the driving force of the squad all through the year, something Mastroeni believes will continue to give the team a definitive edge. During a recent interview with MLS pundits Brian Dunseth and Keith Costigan on SiriusXM FC (Ch. 157) earlier this week, RSL’s head coach explained:
“I think now over the past six games, we’ve really dialed back in and gotten back to being the honest, hard-working team that we typically are. We’re a team that works hard on both sides of the ball, and we’re a team that never quits. And if we can get those three things right, with the quality that we have and the new players who’ve joined us, we can compete for the cup, we can win.”
The midweek meeting will also represent the third time this season the teams have squared off, with the previous two encounters each ending in one-all and goalless stalemates, respectively.
Eric Ramsay’s Loons also come into this playoff fixture enjoying some positive momentum of their own, with six wins in the last eight games and unbeaten in the last five. However, Minnesota have lost its last three Audi MLS Cup Playoff outings and have not won a postseason contest since the 2020 conference semifinals.
“Minnesota have been one of the best teams [in the league] in probably the last month-and-a-half to two months. I think they’ve given up only three goals in seven games, so they’ve been really dialed into being stingy defensively, but also have enough attacking talent and a strong group that can make a difference at any point,” Mastroeni explained to Dunseth and Costigan.
“We’re going up against a team that’s organized and experienced and have been in a great run of form, so this is going to be a challenge for us. And we learned a lot from our last game against them as far as how we want to play… so I think it’s going to be a fantastic matchup. I feel really good about where we're at and we just got to continue to do the little things right on both sides of the ball [like in recent games] to have a chance to go through.”
- Luna poised to continue good form: Playmaker Diego Luna will be looking to continue his recent stunning form with fellow attackers Dominik Marczuk and Anderson Julio primed to follow suit. On the other end, Captain Chicho Arango will be hoping to finally end his goal drought.
2024 has been Diego Luna’s year, and deservedly so. Yet another fact that cannot be contended with.
RSL’s diminutive creator-in-chief continued his recent fine form last time out with the equalizing goal as the icing on the cake of a man-of-the-match performance during the victory over Vancouver. His strike against the ‘Caps also represented his second goal in as many games, as well as his third goal in just four starts amongst RSL’s final five games of the regular season, echoing his reputation as one of the most talented overall players, never mind just young players, in the country.
RSL’s boss was full of praise for his star attacker during his recent interview recognizing the midfielder’s exertion and crucial contributions over the past few seasons.
“He (Diego) is a fantastic young man who has come up trumps during important times of the season last year and now this year,” Pablo explained. “He’s a player who’s got the right mindset, plays with a chip on his shoulder, is super-talented, and is now adding [more] goals and assists to his game which is what makes an attacking player an attacking player, and I think he will be destined for greatness.”
With his goal last time out, the 21-year-old brought his season goal contribution tally to 20, enveloping eight goals and a team-leading 12 assists throughout 2024, his best individual campaign of his young career thus far. With the postseason set to bring with it a whole unique set of challenges, Mastroeni will surely be looking to his in-form number eight to continue to help lead the team into a new glorious era starting with the midweek visit of the Loons.
Alongside Luna, the likes of Dominik Marczuk and Anderson Julio in attack, amongst others, will also be eager to bring their recent positive runs of forms into the postseason, with Captain Chicho Arango also looking to break his goalscoring duck in Tuesday’s opener.
28-year-old Julio has shone as one of the team’s most consistent performers throughout the year, springing to life during the domestic season restart at the end of August and the latter periods of the campaign with three goals throughout the team’s final games, including an MLS goal-of-the-season contending 57-yard chip in the 3-2 home win against FC Dallas on September 18.
The former Atlético de San Luis (Liga MX) striker currently boasts nine goals and two assists in total this season, equaling his most prolific goal-scoring campaign to date, and will certainly be ultra-motivated to set a new personal record including the playoff bracket.
New signing Marczuk also features as a tantalizing player given his impressive beginning to life in Claret-and-Cobalt. The 20-year-old Polish attacker arrived on the Wasatch Front late in the summer, and has impressed greatly during his acclimatization period at the Club, with one goal and one assist in five starts thus far, adding encouraging cameos in three other substitute appearances, including most recently in the Vancouver win.
Captain Arango will also focus on breaking an eight-game MLS drought in Tuesday night’s match. The 29-year-old last found the back of the net in the 5-2 win against Atlanta United on July 6, extending a stunning start to the season. However, a combination of multi-game suspensions and injuries all contributed to a gradual drop in form, conspiring to bring about a cruel barren duck that ultimately ruined his chances of setting a new RSL single-season goal-scoring record.
The best teams typically do well when their biggest-name players and strikers are all performing and bagging the goods, and there is no better time to do it in North American football than during the playoffs. Surely the team will also be hoping their captain and leader can return to his goalscoring best if RSL stand any chance of lifting the MLS Cup come the end of the year.
The end is nigh, and the stakes are high.
You’ve been with us every step of the way. Get behind the team again one more time for this final, definitive series. This is it, the place where the full season of hard work and perseverance leads to. The true test is now about to begin.
One voice for your team, at your house, for your Claret-and-Cobalt.
