Welcome back to storylines.
RSL returns to action again on Saturday in yet another quick turnaround, three-game week, for the final leg of its eight-day gauntlet, at home for the visiting Portland Timbers to America First Field in what promises to be yet another thrilling MLS affair.
Pablo Mastroeni’s side enjoyed a return to winning ways last time out, where goals from Brayan Vera, on his return to the starting lineup, and a 57-yard goal of the season contending wonder-strike from Anderson Julio led the team to a mostly comfortable 3-2 home victory over FC Dallas.
The Claret-and-Cobalt return to America First Field for its second game in four days and final bout of an arduous series looking to replicate the successes and apply the solutions and lessons learned against both of its recent Texan opponents.
The stage is thus supremely set for a coronating order of events on Saturday with a procession of exciting twists and bends sure to tickle the nerves and excite the fantasy.
So what did RSL do well against Dallas, and how can the team reproduce such a performance again on the weekend? We take a closer look at some of these pressing questions as well as some pertinent, compelling narratives in this latest iteration of RSL storylines.
Storylines
- Greater Executions: Wednesday’s result featured notable rotations and improvements from last weekend’s debacle on the Gulf Coast, something Pablo and the team will look to maintain.
- Anderson the Glorious: Striker Anderson Julio will be looking to continue his stunning form this season heading into Saturday’s clash and beyond. New signing Dominik Marczuk might also look primed to follow suit, though patience will still be required.
- Chicho Coronation Day? RSL’s Captain is set to return to the team once again, with another chance to finally break a decade-long Club record and etch his name permanently into Claret-and-Cobalt folklore.
Where to Watch
You can catch RSL vs Portland on Apple TV’s MLS Season Pass right here https://tv.apple.com/ or take in the euphoric America First Field experience by getting your tickets today here https://rsl.com/tickets
Kickoff is at 7:30 p.m. MT on Saturday, Sept. 21.
The Deep Dive
- Greater Executions: Wednesday’s result featured notable rotations and improvements from last weekend’s debacle on the Gulf Coast, something Pablo and the team will look to maintain.
At the end of last Saturday’s result in Houston, RSL Head Coach Pablo Mastroeni primarily cited his sides’ collective lack of proper defensive execution and commitment, as well as offensive profligacy, as being most culpable in the defeat.
On Wednesday, his players delivered the perfect response.
“We had two areas of focus for this game, our re-press and our defensive commitment, and ironically we end up scoring three goals,” Pablo explained to the assembled media in the aftermath of Wednesday night’s win.
“It's so counterintuitive to think if you defend well from the front you’re gonna score a lot of goals. There’s a reason they say attack wins you games and defense wins you titles… and I believe that when we give that type of effort, we become not just a good defensive team but also a good attacking one. So this performance should become a standard for us in making sure we don't take defensive actions for granted, and we’ll also find ourselves scoring a lot of goals.”
For all of its frustrations, the defeat in Houston did provide compelling points of introspection, and crucial, necessary improvements needed to be made, particularly for a team that had undergone as much change as RSL did during the summer transfer window. And whilst there still remain minor kinks in the armor, as you’d naturally expect within any club, Wednesday night represented a major, encouraging continuance from what we’d seen so often throughout the start and middle of the season.
Despite multiple player rotations which included at total of seven positional and personnel changes, Pablo Mastroeni’s charges delivered an efficient, determined performance at both ends of the pitch in the face of staunch opposition and, in truth, on another day might well have come out of the game with an even higher margin of difference than was the reality at the end of 90 minutes.
Defensively, the team left little to the imagination, and even less to fruition, for its Texan opponents, with dogged, tenacious displays all across the park, perhaps most exemplified by a Matt Crooks challenge as early as the 7th minute, when the midfielder tracked all the way back to his defensive third to execute a perfectly timed slide tackle on Marco Farfan who’d stolen the ball.
Tactically speaking, in minor contrast to some of its previous games, as opposed to pressing high from the front when out of possession, the team adopted a slightly different approach on Wednesday night. Whilst still pressing high up during promising situations, the players, for the most part, and particularly from the midway point of the first half, would all drop deeper into a mid-block behind the center line, inviting the opposition forward before then springing dangerous transitions through the searing pace and skill of some of its attackers once possession was recovered.
With the team having to play three games in eight days, it represented a subtle, shrewd tactical shift which, as this author sees it, brought about two main advantages. Defensively, having attackers drop back to form a midblock helped provide sufficient numbers in even deeper defensive zones and situations. Offensively, the approach, at least to some observers, also seemed to give the visitors a false sense of calm whenever RSL recovered the ball in deeper areas, which even further aided the efficiency of the hosts’ transitions. This is mostly evidenced by the slow, and often poor, defensive reactions the visitors had to both of Julio’s goals on the night.
During the buildup to the first goal, after Gavin Beavers plays a long ball forward towards Julio, Dallas defender Nkosi Tafari loses out in the air perhaps far too easily to the RSL striker, barely even putting up a challenge and allowing his opponent properly position himself in preparation to shoot. Similarly, as Julio subsequently begins to cut infield, Farfan backs off him as opposed to trying to win the ball back higher up, not sensing any imminent goal threat with the ball still being so high upfield, allowing RSL’s number 29 to fully cut inside and take one touch before unleashing a spectacular 58-yard chip, which sailed over the arms of Maarten Paes and pierced the back of the net.
The third goal is far simpler. **Phillip Quinton** assumes possession of the ball under impending intense pressure. So much so, in fact, that for a split second, it looks as though he might actually come off second-best in any ensuing challenge if he is caught. But he manages to evade it by playing a delightful pass down the line and forward towards Dominik Marczuk who, also under impending pressure, allows the ball to roll across his body to sidestep the half-hearted challenge of his defender thus giving him the entire length of the opposing right flank to run down and deliver a sublime, pacey ball which was tapped home by Julio.
The team’s high-press moments during dangerous situations also bore fruit as is well evidenced by the first goal. A ball played out to his teammate by Paes was intercepted in the middle of the visitors’ half by Braian Ojeda who in turn exchanged passes with Crooks before playing a ball forward to Julio in the middle who then made his way into the area before being bundled down by Sebastien Ibeagha leading to the penalty for RSL’s opening goal of the contest.
Last weekend’s was also a game marked distinctly by poor finishing and profligacy in front of goal. Wednesday, again, was a sufficient improvement and change from that, with the team successfully converting three of its six chances on target, according to a statistical match report published on FBref.
In general, it was a tactically-adept approach and a selfless performance all-around from the players, only ultimately cruelly denied the rewards of both a clean sheet and a greater margin. What might have otherwise made for a flawless defensive performance was still uncharacteristically perforated by minor lapses resulting in goal concessions through a free-kick and penalty respectively, something Pablo and his coaching staff will no doubt rectify. But the highlights of Wednesday’s display will certainly also be something Pablo and the players will be looking to replicate, and even improve upon, ahead of the visit of Portland Timbers this weekend.
- Anderson the Glorious: Striker Anderson Julio will be looking to continue his stunning form this season heading into Saturday’s clash and beyond. New signing Dominik Marczuk might also look primed to follow suit, though patience will still be required.
When striker Anderson Julio scored his first goal, and RSL’s second, of Wednesday night’s affair midway through the first half, teammate Dominik Marczuk placed both of his hands on the back of his head, his face overcome with pure astonishment, in raw, utter disbelief.
His expression echoed the thoughts and feelings of the near-20,000 fans in attendance at America First Field. They had all just witnessed the impossible, the seemingly improbable, and ironically enough, yet again for the second time this season.
Premier League commentator Martin Tyler’s incredible, passionate commentary on Wayne Rooney’s last-minute overhead kick goal for Manchester United against Manchester City back in February 2011 comes to mind,
“It defies description! How about sensational?! How about superb?!”
Indeed such commentary could well have been broadcasted for Julio’s goal and anyone not knowing its actual origin might’ve been none the wiser. It was that special.
And truly it did. There are no words, no clever play on sentences, or savvy combinations or interlinks of phrases or descriptions that could ever do such a strike justice, depicting not only its beauty but also the full range of emotion felt by everyone in attendance who stood witness to it.
A goal from the heavens. But even that feels insufficient.
“Anderson the Glorious,” for what was a truly glorious, audacious strike.
His brace midweek took him up to nine goals and two assists in total this season, equaling his most prolific goalscoring campaign back in 2021 where he scored nine times and laid on a single assist in 38 total appearances. With five more regular season games still to go, the 28-year-old will surely be looking to eclipse his previous personal record and set a new one beginning with the weekend’s clash with the Timbers.
New signing Marczuk also looks well set up to enjoy a productive end to his MLS regular season campaign in his debut year in the American game on the basis of his performance midweek.
The 20-year-old made his first start for the Club on Wednesday, lasting for a total of 77 minutes before being substituted to excited cheers from the RSL faithful. In what was only his third appearance, the Polish winger delivered an encouraging, exciting performance capped off with a sublime, game-winning assist for the team’s third goal of the night.
Receiving a forward pass from teammate Quinton, Marczuk intelligently allowed the ball roll across his body and forward to evade the pressure of an advancing defender before impressively sprinting down the length of the opposition right flank and delivering a perfectly weighed low cross into the box and across the face of goal which Julio finished with aplomb.
A first assist on your first start? Truly the stuff of dreams. Now patience will continue to be required though for a player whose home lies on the other side of the Atlantic, and who up until August had never lived outside of his country of Poland, but still the signs have been positive, and on the back of such a fine beginning to life on the Wasatch Front, RSL’s new number 11 will be hoping such a performance serves as a springboard to even greater things on the horizon.
- Chicho Coronation Day? RSL’s Captain is set to return to the team once again, with another chance to finally break a decade-long standing record and etch his name permanently into Claret-and-Cobalt folklore.
Sound the bells and ready the procession! For the time is nigh.
Cristian Daniel Arango. The Wonder of the Wasatch.
If specific words were equivalent to currencies, and we earned a dollar each time we mentioned Chicho’s name, we just might no longer need to sell tickets. But alas, such imaginations fail to reflect reality, yet Chicho’s name continues to reverberate regardless.
RSL’s Captain and flagbearer was absent from Wednesday’s MLS home fixture for a caution accumulation, after suffering a first-half booking last weekend against Houston, but is expected to be back in the starting lineup for the visit of Portland on Saturday.
In what, by all accounts, has been a record-breaking personal campaign, the 29-year-old remains on the verge of more individual greatness at the head of the Claret-and-Cobalt glitterati. His goal against Atlanta on July 6 took him up to 17 regular-season league goals this season alone and now only a solitary goal away from breaking the Club’s decade-long standing single-season goal record set back in 2012 by legend Álvaro Saborío.
Saturday, thus, offers yet another glorious opportunity to craft a remarkable narrative, and in sovereign fashion, in front of an adoring Riot, effectively crowning him king of the Wasatch and its environs, and Champion of the Mountain West.
RSL’s swashbuckling Colombian striker still sits second in the league’s Golden Boot race, his 17 goals being two behind D.C. United’s Christian Benteke on 19, and will no doubt also have the award in his sights in his pursuit of further Claret-and-Cobalt glory.
A coronation in waiting. It could well all happen this weekend, and you don’t want to miss out.
Get your tickets and grab a popcorn, and sit down to enjoy premium viewing to the greatest show on earth. The Claret-and-Cobalt are on the march again, best not to get left behind.
Get behind us one more time, and may the odds, as always, be ever in our favor.
