Culture and continuity: How Real Salt Lake secured MLS Cup Playoff bid in 5th straight season
Victor Olatunji had a brace in Real Salt Lake's 2-2 draw at St. Louis City SC that helped secure a playoff berth in an MLS-best fifth consecutive season.
Real Salt Lake’s 2-2 draw with St. Louis City SC will come with some taste of bitterness and a little disappointment after Joao Klauss’ 89th-minute equalizer Saturday night.
But it also comes with an MLS Cup Playoff berth.
The club wrapped up its 12-17-5 season with 41 points and a postseason bid for an fifth consecutive season. It’s the seventh time in the last eight years Salt Lake has made the regular-season cut, and 15th time in 18 campaigns since making its inaugural playoff appearance in 2008.
Put another way: Pablo Mastroeni has never failed to make the playoffs since Pablo Mastroeni was named the full-time manager Dec. 13, 2021.
Maybe this is what the club is, or what it’s become, in a perennial playoff contender — though one that hasn’t escaped the first round in three years. The second part can be addressed later.
But the first part? There are a lot worse places to be in MLS than the longest active streak of playoff appearances. Millions — or at least, hundreds of thousands — of both dollars and allocation money have been spent to find such consistency.
“I think it just speaks volumes to the type of characters that the front office has done a really good job of bringing in,” Mastroeni said. “We pride ourselves in being great athletes and great professionals — but also great people.
“When you have great people working hard together, believing together, even in difficult seasons like this year, I think the spirit of the group overrides some fo the things that haven’t gone right. And tonight, I think, was a great display of resilience, of execution, and coming up trumps when really there’s no reason with the season that we have to believe in ourselves.”
It’s a credit, Mastroeni added, to goalkeeper Rafael Cabral and the leadership group on the team. It’s also a credit to the rising stars of tomorrow performing today, like U.S. international Diego Luna and teenager Zavier Gozo — both of whom recenty returned from international duty with the U.S. senior and U-20 squads to be available for Saturday night’s regular-season finale.
It goes beyond that, to players like Victor Olatunji, the newly acquired forward who scored both goals, as well as designated player Diogo Gonçalves, who assisted on Olatunji’s second goal.
Gozo’s assist on the first goal was his seventh goal contribution of the season, extending his club record for teenage appearances on the scoresheet.
Salt Lake will open the 2025 MLS Cup Playoffs in the Western Conference wild-card round, an 8-9 matchup with the Portland Timbers.
Wednesday’s kickoff is scheduled for 8:30 p.m. MT at Providence Park in the Pacific Northweset. All matches will stream on MLS Season Pass on Apple TV.
“The way things are going for Portland right now,” said MLS analyst Sacha Kljestan on the league’s match-night review show., “I wouldn’t be surprised to see them smacked again in Portland on Wednesday night.”