Real Salt Lake will put one of the best starts in club history on the line Saturday night when it hosts San Diego FC in Sandy, Utah. The meeting comes seven weeks after the teams played to a 2-2 draw on March 22, a game RSL rescued with Victor Olatunji’s 85th-minute goal.
RSL enters at 4-1-1 with 13 points, its second-best six-match start in 22 seasons. Only the club’s 5-1-0 opening in 2011 was better, and the current run includes a five-match unbeaten stretch of 4-0-1. The home form has been even sharper. Real Salt Lake is 3-0-0 at home after last weekend’s 3-1 win over Sporting Kansas City, when Diego Luna, Sergi Solans and Zavier Gozo all scored.
That record gives Pablo Mastroeni’s team a reason to be direct about its expectations, even if the coach has been careful not to overstate them. Going into the season, he said, nobody really gave his side a chance this year. Saturday offers another chance to prove that opening was no accident, especially against a club that already knows it can be pushed to the edge in this matchup.
San Diego FC arrives at 3-2-2 with 11 points and without a win in four straight matches at 0-2-2. The club has lost its last two, 3-0 to the San Jose Earthquakes and 2-1 to Minnesota United, and the defeat to Minnesota came with Chris McVey sent off in the first minute of the second half. He will miss the trip to Utah. Luca Bombino scored San Diego’s only goal in that match, while Marcus Ingvartsen and Anders Dreyer scored in the March 22 draw against Real Salt Lake.
Mikey Varas said that last match was a step in the right direction even though the result did not go San Diego’s way, and he added that the group feels like it is getting back on track. Bombino was blunter. He called the stretch frustrating, saying the club expects a lot of itself and knows it has the talent and work rate to reach its goals on the field.
The friction in this game is plain. Real Salt Lake has turned a strong early run into a home-heavy statement, while San Diego is trying to stop a slide before it hardens into something bigger. Mastroeni called San Diego a fantastic team and said the visitors are in a rough patch but still have players who can change any match. He expects a hard-fought one, and the standings suggest he is right.
Saturday night in Sandy will not decide the season for either club, but it will say something useful about both. For Real Salt Lake, it is a chance to turn a promising opening into a serious one. For San Diego, it is a test of whether the response Varas wants is already starting to show.
