Chicho Arango, RSL continue 'best in league' argument with 5-1 rout of Austin
The 29-year-old DP striker from Medellin, Colombia ascended to the top of the Golden Boot race with his 16th goal of the season, a hat trick against Austin FC to keep RSL atop the West.
In journalism school, you’re taught to be skeptical, or at least maintain a healthy degree of skepticism enough to trust-but-verify every source, contact and relatively unknown fact you account.
In the profession, it’s easy to encounter people who are too good to be true — superstars whose personal lives remain amiss, politicians with a squeaky clean image that is actually anything-but, or stories that craft such a compelling narrative that often time they end up being my novelization than fact.
But sometimes people present their best selves because it is, largely, their main self. Real Salt Lake had a player like that for a half-dozen years in Damir Kreilach, a goal-scoring captain with 47 markers in six seasons that don’t tell nearly enough of the person he was (the one who donated tomes of his own salary towards a section of the stadium, ‘Kreilach’s Corner’ dedicated to providing disadvantaged youth with an opportunity to see RSL and Major League Soccer live).
With Kreilach gone to Vancouver, RSL has one of those again. His name, this time, is Chicho Arango.
The 29-year-old DP striker from Medellin, Colombia ascended to the top of Major League Soccer’s Golden Boot race with his 16th goal of the season Saturday, a hat trick in RSL’s 5-1 win over Austin FC that maintained the Salt Lake side’s 3-point lead atop the Western Conference with a 9-2-6 overall record and a 13-match unbeaten run that is the second-longest such streak in club history.
But the part about Arango’s performance Saturday night that caught my eye wasn’t his second hat trick of the season, one of just two RSL players in the last decade-plus to accomplish such a feat.
Chicho Arango has entered superstar territory this year. But that’s not his best attribute.
After the match, Arango entered the post-match media room — the one that Real Salt Lake named after the club’s former vice president of communications John Genna, another gem of a human who passed away tragically following a battle with ALS but not before perfectly embodying the words “media relations” and “love of club and country” — and grabbed a second chair for an accompanying gentleman to sit next to him at the desk.
Who was this elder statesman?
“My father,” Arango said, with English more perfect than he often cares to admit.
"My father reminds me that everything I am is because of the work and the sacrifice of him and my mother,” he later said in Spanish. “I’m very happy to be able to have them here with me and enjoy this time with them.”
It’s not the first time Arango has fulfilled his media responsibilities with family, bringing his children to meet with reporters after the game and sitting with his wife nearby while answering questions about as many as 16 goals and nine assists he’s completed this year.
But to these family members, Arango isn’t the leading scorer in MLS or a guy competing with Inter Miami’s Lionel Messi and FC Cincinnati’s Lucho Acosta for league MVP honors. To them, he’s not even Chicho.
He’s Cristian Arango: a husband, a father, a son, a brother. And for all the other titles owned by the $6 million striker, Arango finds a way to keep perhaps his most important titles in plain sight.
Salary aside, he’s often one of the last players to leave the training pitch. Often times, he’ll do it in a group, with a handful of teammates surrounding him, joking with him, or spraying his slicked back hair with water. He’ll regularly stop to sign autographs and take photos with fans that travel to RSL’s training facility in Herriman or AFF in Sandy the day before Matchday.
After one recent training, he wandered over to a family with two small boys, both of whom were screaming “CHICHO!!” at him for 10 minutes while he attempted to placate other fans on the other side of the seating area.
And then, he gave all the time these boys needed, posing for photos, signing autographs, and joking with the kids’ parents.
That’s the thing about Arango: he doesn’t just enjoy and appreciate his own success. He works for it, perhaps as hard or harder than anyone. But he also celebrates in the successes of those around him.
For as much as Arango celebrated his own hat trick, and each goal that seemed to push Austin FC further and further back away from the sellout crowd of 21,078 at America First Field, the striker was happy pulling aside Anderson Julio after each goal of his own brace — even if he told him to leave the stadium with a hat trick of his own.
“I’m very happy for the two goals of Julio,” Arango said in Spanish. “He’s a great player, and he supports us a lot. He’s a back part of it, too.”
For all of his own goal contributions — 25 in total, the third-fastest player to reach such a mark in a season in league history — Arango consistently dishes praise for his club companions, and their role in his own numbers.
“It’s great to be able to score another hat trick; I’m happy about it,” he said. “But it would all be impossible without my teammates, without Andres’ movement to get my head on the ball, without the passes that Luna sets up. None of this would be possible without the work of my teammates.”
But that’s the thing about RSL: for as important as Arango has been and continues to be for the club, his teammates haven’t been far off. Andres Gomez has a goal contribution in each of the past six games, the third player in MLS history with such a streak at 21 years or younger (the other two: Erick Torres in 2015, and former RSL midfielder Andy Williams in 1998).
Anderson Julio had his first brace since April 2021 at Minnesota, his first match after signing with Salt Lake. Justen Glad and Brayan Vera continue to be two of the most important players on the team, in front of the goalkeeper renaissance that is 32-year-old shot stopper Zac MacMath.
Emeka Eneli may secretly be RSL’s most important player. Alex Katranis has provided the club exactly what it needed — and then some — since arriving at left back. Diego Luna is playing his best soccer since making the move to MLS from USL Championship, and Fidel Barajas has played years ahead of the 18-year-old recent high school graduate that he is.
That old cliche has becoming norm again: the team is the star.
“Since I’ve been on the team, I think this is the deepest we’ve been,” Glad said. “It’s exciting to be on this team right now.”
Still, despite the career-best start to the season he’s had, Arango recognizes one thing: the year is still young.
“We haven’t won anything yet,” he said. “We’ve been working well. We’re on the right track, but the objective is still in front of us and we’ll work hard to accomplish them.”
