Real Salt Lake GK Rafael Cabral's story is one of struggle, loss and unyielding determination
The newly signed RSL keeper went "in my own words" with the club in a feature published Friday morning at RSL.com.
A tale of struggle, loss, and unyielding determination, defined by one man’s undying faith and effervescent devotion. In this first part of our newly revived In My Own Words player series, Rafael Cabral shares with us the story of his becoming. Read the full story on RSL.com.
Sorocaba is a city one hour and a half away by car from Sao Paulo, in Brazil.
That’s where I was born.
I was born into a very healthy family, with my daddy, and my mom, and I’ve got one brother older than me.
It’s a nice city and it’s getting bigger now. Back then there were only like 500,000 people but now it’s around a million! It's getting big because it's close to Sao Paulo, so many people are moving from there to live in Sorocaba, then they'll drive to work in Sao Paulo and back again to Sorocaba because Sorocaba is safer.
My whole family is from there. Everybody is originally from Sao Paulo, but my mother moved when she was young because my grandfather moved the family to work in Sorocaba, so all my family was in Sorocaba and my life was with them. I stayed there till I was 13 years old when I left to play soccer. We are a very close family.
I met Vanessa (my wife) there too. She moved to Sorocaba when she was 10 or 12 years old, around that age, but I met her when she was 14 and I was 16.
Growing up, I had friends from school, but I didn’t have much of a life away from school because I was just focused on studying and practicing soccer. I started to train very early, so I never even went to a friend’s party or anything because I always had to train. It was school in the morning, afternoon training, and night for sleeping, again and again throughout the week, and weekends were with my family.
I was six years old when I started playing soccer, and I got this passion from my daddy because he wanted to be a soccer player too. But his father passed away when he was 14 and his mother was a very simple woman, so he gave up trying to play soccer to work and support his family because back then people didn’t get much money from soccer and he didn’t have the help or the resources to try. And so he gave me everything. What he didn’t have, he gave to me.
Read the full story on RSL goalkeeper Rafa Cabral — in his own words — at RSL.com.
Real Salt Lake (4-7-0, 12 points) continues its three-game road run Saturday at 6:30p MT against FC Dallas (4-4-3, 15 points) at Toyota Stadium in Frisco, Texas.
Real Salt Lake arrives in the DFW Metroplex – where it has lost just once since the 2017 season – looking to earn a bounceback result and avoid consecutive losses for the fourth time this season, on the heels of last week’s 2-1 loss at Vancouver.
For the sixth time in eight opportunities across the first 13 games across all competitions in 2025, RSL has yet another chance to embody one of the hallmarks of the Pablo Mastroeni era, displaying its ability to rebound from a loss, RSL dropping just 13 back-to-back scenarios across all competitions in Pablo’s 152 overall games managed since August, 2021.
Saturday’s match will be available on MLS Season Pass on Apple TV, with Josh Eastern and former RSL original Jamie Watson (ENG) on the call, as are Jose Bauz & Natalia Astrain (SPN).