Is Justen Glad one of RSL's best goal scorers?
It's early, but the 26-year-old center back has brought his scoring boots to the 2023 season for Real Salt Lake with a pair of highlight-reel finishes.
We’re not here to break down Real Salt Lake’s 2-1 loss to Austin FC in the club’s home opener. Not at this point. It is, after all, still early in the season, and RSL has had the past week off to figure out what went wrong.
But we do want to talk about RSL’s leading goal scorer for a moment. Like Major League Soccer’s Twitter admin asked during the match: are we sure Justen Glad is a center back?
Real Salt Lake has three goals on the young season during a 1-2 start, and players designated “forwards” on the roster haven’t accounted for any of them.
In fact, that it’s a center back who has two-thirds of the goals (again, still early) this season may be just mildly surprising. RSL manager Pablo Mastroeni said the goals may be coming “by committee” for the start of the year, with attacking players like Jefferson Savarino, Andres Gomez and Pablo Ruiz still settling into a late-starting season (also, it should be noted that utility midfielder Damir Kreilach has the other goal).
Still, even before the season, Glad made a promise to be more involved in the attack. And he’s certainly living up to it early. He might even have to adjust his preseason expectations, though, at the the rate he’s scoring.
“He’s just got a real knack for goal,” Mastroeni told the Salt City FC podcast. “J Glad at the beginning of the year said he wanted to score a minimum of five goals this year. When you speak that into the universe, the ball finds a way of getting on your foot. He’s got a great knack of finishing balls in the box.
“It’s a testament to his willingness to be brave; you have to be willing to put your head and body in difficult places, and he’s carved out a great craft of being able to be opportunistic in those areas.”
Of course, for Glad to be as dangerous as he is in those situations, he needs quality service. And RSL has had high-quality service, particularly from the right wing in Maikel Chang and Andrew Brody, to help set up those scoring chances.
No matter the player, it’s an area RSL has looked to exploit. The right side feeds into the back post with quality crosses, which is the area of the goal-mouth often most neglected by opposing defenses.
“When I have the ball in those areas, we try to look for the back post,” RSL right back Andrew Brody said. “Dami, especially likes to drift towards the back post, and he’s so dangerous when the ball gets whipped into the box.
“When the ball is whipped in, it’s trying to react off of Dami — and Justen was in the right spot for a great finish.”
RSL will need that service — and then some — this Saturday when they host Western Conference-leading St. Louis FC. The newcomers from the ‘Lou set an MLS record with their fourth consecutive win to start the season, the first expansion side in league history to accomplish such a feat.
RSL will also be lacking five players due to international callups in MF Braian Ojeda (Paraguay), FW Jefferson Savarino (Venezuela), FW Rubio Rubin (Guatemala), MF Diego Luna (US U-20) and GK Gavin Beavers (US U-19).
Fortunately, Ruiz and left back/left wing Brayan Vera have arrived in Salt Lake City.
We’ll have more on that in another newsletters. For now, listen to the podcast episode above, or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or anywhere else you get podcasts for the latest news, notes and interviews.
