3 Points: Real Salt Lake saves best for Decision Day to book playoff berth
3 Points: Real Salt Lake saves best for Decision Day to book playoff berth
Jefferson Savarino scored the opening goal, Bryan Oviedo added two assists, and Real Salt Lake picked up the all-necessary three points with a 3-1 victory over the Portland Timbers.
In a do-or-die, winner-take-all regular-season finale with a berth in the MLS Cup Playoffs on the line, Real Salt Lake needed a win over the Portland Timbers to keep its season alive.
The Sandy club didn’t have a track record of playing particularly well down the stretch, which led to Sunday’s situation. But RSL put it all together when it mattered most, booking their fourth postseason berth in the last five seasons Sunday at America First Field in Sandy.
Win and in? More like, won and done.
Jefferson Savarino scored the opening goal, Bryan Oviedo added two assists, and Real Salt Lake picked up the all-necessary three points with a 3-1 victory over Portland Timbers FC.
Rubio Rubin and Bode Hidalgo also scored for Real Salt Lake, which improved to 12-11-11 with 47 points — one point clear of Portland for the seventh and final playoff spot in the Western Conference after Minnesota’s 2-0 win over Vancouver.
Dairon Asprilla scored a late goal for the Timbers.
After being denied a goal just two minutes in by an offside call, Savarino made it count in the 19th minute, taking a layoff from Bryan Oviedo and slicing an open shot from just outside the penalty inside the far post to give RSL a lead it would hold through halftime.
It was the only shot on goal of the first half for RSL, which otherwise out-shot Portland 8-3 before the break while completing 83.8% of its passes with six corner kicks to just one conceded.
Oviedo wasn’t done yet, though.
The 32-year-old Costa Rican international set up RSL’s second goal with a run into the box before sliding a cross to Rubin, who scored his first goal in 27 regular-season matches to double the host’s advantage in the 48th minute.
Portland seldom threatened through the first hour, such as when Juan Mosquera lofted a ball from the right side of the box that Zac MacMath easily parried in the 60th minute.
Just to be safe, though, Hidalgo made it 3-0 in the closing minutes of regulation with his first goal in MLS play — set up by a stunning cross in traffic from Jasper Loffelsend in the 82nd minute.
Portland’s elimination, in addition to Vancouver’s 2-0 loss to Minnesota United on Sunday, marked the first time in North American soccer history that at least one of the three Cascadian teams did not make the postseason, according to MLS records.
Just believe
RSL didn’t enter Sunday’s Decision Day with much of a chance at the playoffs. The club’s match against Portland was do-or-die, and the Timbers’ recent track record of success put Salt Lake at long odds to get the needed result for a postseason berth.
But the underdogs got a little lucky, then created their own luck, then made a bid themselves.
“What did you expect? We never quit, we never die,” Justin Meram said as he was walking off the field. “We’re in the playoffs. You don’t want us.”
It took a Herculean effort from a lot of players, but here’s one that deserves special mention.
With the win, MacMath became RSL’s first-ever “Iron Man” to play every minute of the regular season. The veteran goalkeeper featured in all 3,060 minutes for the first team in 2022, and one of two players to appear in all 34 regular-season matches (Andrew Brody, who started 33).
“I think we all had a pretty good feeling going into this game, and I thought we controlled the game very well,” MacMath said. “It was a comfortable win, which is nice considering what we did last year.
“We deserved to be in the playoffs. We struggled at times, but I thought we looked like a playoff team this whole time.”
‘You never forget your fist’
Sunday’s match day also made history for RSL.
Bode Hidalgo, an RSL homegrown product who was born and raised in Davis County, scored his first career goal in an MLS match Sunday as a second-half sub.
Hidalgo scored his first goal with the organization in September 2020 with Real Monarchs, but before the season, he told Mastroeni that he was going to make it to the first team. He finally did that over the international break, debuting in a Leagues Cup match against Atlas to earn a substitute appearance Sunday in the 58th minute, replacing Maikel Chang, who came off while struggling to breathe.
Hidalgo left his mark on the history books with RSL’s third goal, finish off a dream pass from Loffelsend to help punch the club’s ticket to the playoffs.
“Obviously, it’s a surreal feeling,” Hidalgo said. “It’s something you always dream of. I was fortunate enough to get it today, and I’m more fortunate that we’re in the playoffs.”
Asked if it was the “biggest goal of his life,” Hidalgo was succinct: “I’d say so.”
Hidalgo, who previously went by Davis before legally changing his last name to honor his stepfather, is the first Utah-born homegrown from Real Salt Lake’s venerated academy to score in an MLS match. He joins fellow Utah products Bofo Saucedo (who was raised, but not born, in Park City), Salt Lake City native Justin Braun, and former Columbus midfielder Todd Miller on the list of MLS goal scorers from the Beehive State, according to RSL stats and information.
Miller, an Alta High graduate who played at Westminster College, was drafted by the Columbus Crew in 1996 and spent two seasons in Ohio before being released and signed by the USL’s Charleston Battery, where he scored 12 goals in 97 appearances from 1997-2000.
That would make Hidalgo the first Utah-born goal scorer in MLS since Braun scored his last goal for Toronto FC in 2013. The 6-foot-3 Skyline High and Salt Lake Community College graduate who played briefly for RSL in 2012 spent the final five years of his career in USL with Sacramento Republic FC and Indy Eleven before retiring in 2018.
“I wouldn’t say it matters what order; I just knew all year being on the bench, when you have your shot, you have to take it,” Hidalgo said of his sub appearance. “Fortunately, today was my day.”
Ditto for his club.
On to Austin
Q2 Stadium will be the site of RSL’s first-round playoff matchup with second-seeded Austin FC. And Mastroeni couldn’t be more excited to face a club that finished 16-10-8, second only to Supporters Shield-winning LAFC in the West.
Alright, alright, alright.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for us,” Mastroeni said. “The feeling in that locker room is a similar feeling to what we had last year. When you have a team with a little history in the playoffs going away form home, we know it’s going to be a difficult match. But I think we’re peaking at the right time.
“It’s going to be a difficult match, but I like the match up.”