Real Salt Lake is scoring from unlikely places — and thriving
Braian Ojeda scored his first goal of the year to lift RSL to a 2-1 win over San Jose, the fifth win in seven outings ahead of the start of Leagues Cup.
Real Salt Lake still doesn’t have lead striker leading the club’s goal-scoring charge — hold that thought, more on it in a moment — but that isn’t slowing the team down, either.
Braian Ojeda scored his first goal of the year Saturday night in the 81st minute to help RSL to a 2-1 win over the San Jose Earthquakes, a fifth win in seven outings in front of 19,238 fans in Sandy, Utah.
Since bottoming out the season with a 2-0 loss to then-last place LA Galaxy back on April 5, the club has won five games with a draw and two losses while collecting 16 of a possible 21 points and climbing from 13th to eighth in the Western Conference.
And they’re doing it without a big-money No. 9, or at least, not a traditional one.
More important, Salt Lake (9-11-4, 31 points) is finding ways to make up for a one deficiency — its goal scoring, where leading scorer Diego Luna was held quiet for the sixth straight game — by improving in other areas: defense, and a cast of characters capable of assembling goals from multiple positions.
In Utah, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Or dare we say … the team is the star?
“Even though we weren’t at our best tonight, good teams find a way to get three points,” RSL manager Pablo Mastroeni said. “We had a lot of good chances, didn’t capitalize on them. And they’re a good team; every team we play is going to be a very good team.”
After Josef Martinez gave the Earthquakes — who lost a sixth straight match — the early lead with a header in the 51st minute, RSL came back.
Diogo Gonçalves led a breakaway in the 57th minute, and when his equalizing cross to Zavier Gozo didn’t find the teenager’s boot, it did have enough pace to carom off a back-sliding Jamar Ricketts for an own goal that tied the match, 1-1.
It’s the third time in four matches Gonçalves has contributed to a goal for RSL, though his cross won’t formally count as an “assist” on the own goal.
Still, it was the third own goal in favor of RSL of the season — all at home, against Seattle, St. Louis and San Jose. Were he a player, Owen Goal would be tied for second with Gonçalves on Salt Lake’s golden boot tally, trailing only Luna’s eight.
The match-winner came from perhaps an equally unlikely source.
After a buildup near the top of the box, Pablo Ruiz found Ojeda before the Paraguayan international lobbed a right-footed laser from distance that deflected off Earthquakes goalkeeper Daniel to put the hosts in front in the 81st minute.
“I saw that I was open on the play — very open — and there was space for me to run in and shoot it,” Ojeda recalled in Spanish. “Thank God, it was able to go in.”
The goal was the first for Ojeda, a central midfielder who operates Salt Lake’s double pivot, since July 6, 2024 against Atlanta United.
“It comes down to moments on the night," Mastroeni said, “and tonight the moment fell to Braian Ojeda.”
RSL opens Leagues Cup against Liga MX power Club América at 7:30 p.m. MT Wednesday, July 30.
