Is Real Salt Lake fun again? Just ask Diego Luna
Luna had a goal and an assist, doubling his goal tally to go along with his sixth assist of the season, in Real Salt Lake’s 2-0 win over Seattle Sounders FC on Wednesday night in Sandy.
Diego Luna couldn’t help but smile.
The question came in Spanish, but his answer rang out in English, as clear as day. He couldn’t even wait long enough for Real Salt Lake’s interpretation team to put the English-voiceover on video.
“Did you have fun tonight?” came the question, in Spanish.
“Yeah. A lot,” Luna responded with a low laugh. “I think I had a lot of fun, and that leads to having a good performance. Right?”
Why wouldn’t he?
Luna had a goal and an assist, doubling his goal tally to go along with his sixth assist of the season, in Real Salt Lake’s 2-0 win over Seattle Sounders FC on Wednesday night in Sandy.
It’s been a long time coming for Luna, the former USL rising star who joined RSL midway through the 2022 season and may just be starting to find his feet in North American soccer’s top league after totaling five goals and three assists in 23 appearances last year.
For RSL coach Pablo Mastroeni — and dozens of predecessors who came before in the Sunnyvale, California native’s soccer career — Luna is just scratching the surface.
But for the 20-year-old U.S. international who figures to play a role in this summer’s Olympic team in Paris, Luna is just having fun.
About time.
He’s been open about his many of his struggles in the past, keeping others close to the vest. That’s OK; what Luna has revealed is that he struggled at times. Physically. Mentally. Socially.
He struggled on the pitch. He struggled in his personal life. He tried to adapt to new fatherhood, a step he and his longtime girlfriend took last fall with the birth of their first child, a son.
He even added Wednesday night that many of his struggles involved therapy, and that his therapist has helped him regain his form and become the man and player he showed in RSL’s midweek win.
“There have been ups and downs, but in my game, I think it’s about being in the right mental state,” Luna said. “If I’m not having fun, stressing out, if I’m not enjoying it while I’m there, my game is going to be off. For me, it’s about being happy and making sure I’m working hard for my team — and things will go my way.”
In honor of Mental Health Awareness month, Luna said it without needing to say it: It’s OK to not be OK. It’s OK to seek help.
There’s only one way to get better — and on the pitch, there’s only one way Luna knows how to improve, as well. Even after Wednesday night’s effort, which saw RSL out-shoot Seattle 21-9 and 9-2 in shots on target, there are improvements that were eating at Luna no more than 45 minutes after the final whistle.
Call them “missed opportunities.”
“Not just one or two; I think we could have had 5-6 goals,” he said. “But it’s a good problem to have. We dominated and won a game 2-0, but we aren’t happy with our final production. I think it’s a good problem to have.”
A good problem to have, indeed.
The club was wrecked four days ago, coming off a 2-2 road draw with the LA Galaxy after surrendering a last-gasp goal to the hosts in Carson, California, that caused Salt Lake to fly home feeling more like a lost 2 points rather than a point gained on the road.
It was enough that RSL’s communications staff cut off post-match communications after Mastroeni spoke for several minutes with the media via videoconference. The team needed to catch their charter flight back to Utah, but there was an added benefit: Nobody was happy.
“The best thing you can have are players that feel worse than the coach in the locker room when things don’t go our way,” Mastroeni said. “We have a locker room of quite a few guys that made sure that everyone understood the way we closed it in LA wasn’t good enough.
“We go as the leaders go. Tonight, everyone had a really good performance and it looked like the words spoken in the locker room after the LA game resonated through.”
By Sunday, they had moved on, Luna said. It showed Wednesday, when RSL possessed for 62% of the first half en route to a 1-0 lead before pulling the dagger out of the Sounders’ gut with Luna’s moon (boy) shot in the 58th minute.
They’ll do the same thing Thursday as they turn the page towards Saturday’s Rocky Mountain Cup showdown with Colorado.
RSL is no longer the plucky underdog simply trying to make it to the playoffs. They’re now the hunted, the top team in the Western Conference with a 4-point lead on second-place Minnesota United (which has two goals in hands), LAFC, Colorado and the Galaxy, who are tied on 21 points.
“After we got home off that flight, it’s over,” Luna said. “We were upset for a couple of hours, but then what’s it going to do for us, dwelling on the past? That’s the strength of our team, the mentality we have: we got home and back to work for this next game. We’re going to come at this game with three more points up to grab.
“Tonight is the same thing. We’ll go home, we’ll relax, and then it’s on to Saturday.”
Saturday’s kickoff against the Rapids is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. MDT in Sandy.