Real Salt Lake Back Home Briefly on Saturday against Toronto FC

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Real Salt Lake Back Home Briefly on Saturday against Toronto FC

April 17, 2025 - Major League Soccer (MLS)
Real Salt Lake News Release


HERRIMAN, Utah - Real Salt Lake (3-5-0, 9 points, 10th West / 20th Shield) return home Saturday for 7:30p MT kickoff for a brief respite during a heavy road stretch, hosting winless Toronto FC (0-4-4, 4 points, 14th East / 28th Shield) at America First Field. Saturday's match will be available via Apple TV+ / MLS Season Pass, with Mark Rogondino & Heath Pearce (ENG) on the call, as are Raul Guzman & Ashley Gonzalez (SPN).

RSL boss Pablo Mastroeni arrives in Sandy Saturday 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, 109 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 the 2-0 reg. season win over LA Galaxy on April 5 marking his 50th MLS victory with RSL.

Toronto FC is now led by Head Coach Robin Fraser, a former RSL assistant coach and a member of Jason Kreis' MLS Cup 2009 championship staff. Toronto FC has not won on Utah soil since the 2007 season, emerging victorious in the teams' first-ever meeting at Rice-Eccles Stadium. Overall, RSL owns 10 wins and two draws at home all-time against that one Toronto loss, a win total that includes a 4-0 group stage victory over Toronto in the 2010 CONCACAF Champions League.

Last week at Nashville, RSL scored first in the early going when Polish international winger Dominik Marczuk slotted home the rebound of Diogo Gonçalves shot from distance, taking the 1-0 lead. Minutes later, Nashville equalized en route to a stoppage-time, penalty-kick game winner to win 2-1, dropping RSL to 37W-7L-12T when scoring first during the Mastroeni era - marking the third match lost this season across all competitions when scoring first (Herediano, San Diego).

Now, for the fourth third time in six opportunities across the first 10 games across all competitions in 2025, RSL has yet another chance to embody 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 149 overall games managed since August, 2021.

Two weeks ago at home, RSL snapped a 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 four RSL matches, snapping a five-half scoreless run for the Claret-and-Cobalt.

In that match, RSL earned its second clean sheet of the season in the 2-0 win over the reigning MLS Cup champions, 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 eight 2025 MLS contests, while Cabral also played all 180 minutes of RSL's Concacaf Champions Cup action to kick off the season.

Game Notes for Saturday's RSL v Toronto FC Match Available Online

The Adobe PDF version of the 2025 RSL Game Guide in advance of Saturday's contest between Real Salt Lake and Toronto FC can be foundHERE. Media members looking to receive the document as an attachment or have further questions are asked to please contact RSL Communications via email at RSLcommunications@RSL.com.

RSL's trip to Nashville last weekend kicked off a run that sees four out of five contests played away, and seven of 10 overall to be played on the road through the end of May. In the coming weeks, RSL will travel to San Diego, Vancouver, Dallas, Colorado, Austin and LA Galaxy, all prior to May 31.

Last week's Nashville loss dropped RSL to a 1-3-1 / 4 point road record this season under the guidance of fifth-year Head Coach Pablo Mastroeni, despite 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.

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