Chicho Arango didn't celebrate his first goal at LAFC. But RSL's 1-0 win was cause for excitement
Chicho Arango didn't celebrate his first goal at LAFC. But RSL's 1-0 win was cause for excitement
Arango scored the only goal of the match — a brilliant header following a pin-perfect cross from Rubio Rubin — to lift RSL to a 1-0 win over Los Angeles FC at BMO Stadium.
The ending was Hollywood-esque in LA LA Land for Chicho Arango and Real Salt Lake.
Arango scored the only goal of the match — a brilliant header following a pin-perfect cross from Rubio Rubin — to lift RSL to a 1-0 win over Los Angeles FC at BMO Stadium, lifting the visitors to a crucial road victory and a tie for second place in the Western Conference Sunday night with just three games remaining in the 2023 regular season.
Seeing the brilliant cross from the wing played in by Rubin, Arango did what he’s done all too often at BMO Stadium: rise up like a salmon, and put the ball away.
That it happened to be past LAFC goalkeeper Maxine Crepeau didn’t matter. RSL was the club that paid Arango’s bills now, and RSL was going to be the one for whom he scored is eighth goal since joining the side in July — and 99th of his professional career.
Arango didn’t celebrate the goal. He owes LAFC too much, and shared a lengthy exchange with Denis Bouanga after the game.
When asked about it after the game by a reporter in English, Arango — with a club translator sitting next to him — didn’t want his words to be translated. He wanted to make sure LA’s fans knew how much they mean to him.
“It’s for respect, for the fans, for the team, for LAFC,” Arango said in English, a rarity for him. “It was respect.
“But for now, I’m with Real Salt Lake,” he continued in Spanish. “They deserve all of me, all my respect, all of my development and all of my focus. I’m very happy to be with them.”
But he didn’t need to celebrate. The rest of his team did plenty of that for him as RSL won its seventh home match of the 2023 regular season — setting a new club record for most away victories in a single season.
In the days leading up to the match, Arango desperately wanted the captain’s armband. He craved it. He craved the responsibility it brings as he made his first trip back to Los Angeles in league play, head coach Pablo Mastroeni explained.
“This week in training, when we prepped for LAFC, you could see there was a different gear that he was working from,” Mastroeni said. “Having had a tough experience the first time he came back, I felt it appropriate that, given his run of form, his inspiration to the group, that he’d lead the group out there. And I think it’s fitting that he scores the winning goal against his old club.”
The armband matters in football. But for Arango, on this night, it really mattered — not just for his former club, but for his current one.
“It was a vote of confidence for me,” Arango said in Spanish. “It was a vote of confidence in my coaching staff, and in my teammates. I have a lot of respect for each of the former captains of this club, and my only responsibility was to work extra hard … and thankfully, we were able to get the result.”
The ending, then, was an ending only Hollywood’s best writers could script.
It didn’t matter that LAFC out-shot the visitors 20-7 or held 68% of possession. All that mattered is that Zac MacMath made seven saves and that LAFC couldn’t find the back of the net for 360-straight minutes across all competitions, a scoreless drought that vaulted Salt Lake back into second place in the Western Conference at the expense of the Black-and-Gold’s own conference title repeat odds.
“We knew it was going to be a tough match. We were going to suffer for a bit,” Arango said. “But the mentality of the team was incredible.”
Once in the midst of seven losses in an eight-match span across all competitions — a run that corresponded with a knee injury to talisman midfielder Pablo Ruiz during a 4-0 loss to LAFC in the club’s Leagues Cup finale — Real Salt Lake have now won back-to-back matches in MLS play for the first time since July 8.
It was the kind of performance — to say nothing of the result — that RSL will need before the league’s Oct. 21 Decision Day. After Saturday’s home finale against Sporting Kansas City (7:30 p.m. MT, MLS Season Pass), the club hits the road for back-to-back road tilts at the LA Galaxy (Oct. 14) and Colorado (Oct. 21).
“This performance, for me, is a great standard to set with two games left on the road,” Mastroeni said. “This is a carbon copy of what we want … It’s got to be these type of performances, because the margins are so thin.”