Real Salt Lake's loss to league-worst Galaxy a reminder how quickly change can happen in MLS
Salt Lake hasn’t gone winless in seven consecutive matches since the end of the 2016 season, shortly before Jeff Cassar was fired as head coach.
Real Salt Lake hit something of a new low on the 2025 season Saturday night, at least one not experienced under its current management.
Lucas Sanabria scored in the first half, and Joseph Paintsil sealed the LA Galaxy’s end of a miserable 16-match winless skid with a 2-0 win over RSL at Dignity Health Sports Park, marking the end of the final winless club in Major League Soccer.
It’s the seventh straight match without a win for RSL, which gave up a stoppage-time goal to Diego Rubio in a 1-1 midweek draw at Austin FC.
A year ago, Salt Lake was on an incredible rise with promising talent, led by a league MVP candidate Chicho Arango and Andrés Gómez before the Colombian winger’s transfer reportedly in the range of $11-13 million.
RSL hasn’t hit rock bottom yet — but it’s understandable why some fans of the club may think so, based off where the team was a year ago compared to after Saturday night’s fracas. If nothing else, Real Salt Lake has reached rare territory.
Salt Lake hasn’t gone winless in seven consecutive matches since the end of the 2016 season, shortly before Jeff Cassar was fired as head coach.
Yes, it’s a low point for Real Salt Lake, one not seen in the nearly five-year tenure of head coach Pablo Mastroeni. The winless skid hasn’t come against a murderous realm of competition, either, with four of the seven losses/ties coming to teams currently eighth or lower in the Western Conference.
But as RSL creeps down to 13th in the conference, is Mastroeni’s job at risk? That’s unlikely.
In a moment of candor with the media following Saturday night’s loss, Mastroeni indicated that he’s as frustrated with the results as the fans are.
But with the current roster — one that started 18-year-old Zavier Gozo for the eighth straight match in a front grouping that included 21-year-old Diego Luna, 21-year-old Dominik Marczuk, and 25-year-old William Agada — the “old man” of RSL’s attacking foursome — the only thing Salt Lake can do is try to turn frustrations into fortitude, or inexperience into experience.
The results aren’t there. The effort and emotion is.
“I don’t think we handled those moments the right way. But in J-Glad’s absence, that’s what these moments call for,” said Mastroeni, pointing to the concussion-related absence of his veteran center back.
“The result is abating us,” he added. “But I’m really proud of the performance, of the effort; it’s kind of baffling at times, but I think it’s about sticking to what we’re doing. The guys are doing great. Gozo continues to do great things, Luna is playing great, the guys are doing great. From a tactical perspective, it was everything we tried to chalk up this thing to be. Whether there was desperation on anyone’s part, it was just about keeping the ball out of the back of the net.”
The young lineup got even younger in the 78th minute, when 17-year-old Real Monarchs standout and RSL Academy graduate Aiden Hezarkhani made his first-team debut. The Irvine, Californa native made his MLS debut in front of several friends and family in Los Angeles, and showed flashes of the quality that caused Mastroeni to bring him up to train with the first team all week after scoring four goals in five matches in MLS NEXT Pro.
The 5-foot-10 attacker wasn’t perfect. But no one should expect that of the teenager who replaced Gozo for the final 15 or so minutes Saturday night.
“What I said to him before he went in the game was, work your tail off and enjoy yourself,” Mastroeni recalled to Hezarkhani. “What I wanted was for him to play with the same creativity and belief that he would if he was playing with the Monarchs.
“He’s a great 1-v-1 player in the wide areas, but I can’t imagine what it would be like to be 17 years old and playing in a professional soccer game. For him to go in there, look the part, make a big play speaks volumes to what he can bring to our group."
RSL’s motto of “winning through development” sometimes takes various forms, because at the moment, the club isn’t winning. Mastroeni knows that, and obsesses over that as much as anyone.
But he also recognizes that the club that made the playoffs for the sixth time in seven years is not the same one he oversees now. Sure, Luna is starring and breaking into the U.S. national team, and Gozo is a rising talent who was just named to the U-19 training camp and is age-eligible for this year’s U-20 World Cup.
This is also the same club that lost four of its top-five goal scorers from last year. Where four players from that group scored eight or more goals, only one is back and Luna has already hit that mark from all of last year.
A lot of the mistakes, inexperiences and simple follies of youth can only be fixed in one way. The only way to cure inexperience … is by providing experience.
“When we talk about winning through development, at the moment we’re not winning,” Mastroeni said. “But it will reap huge benefits for the team, and I think in the near future … But what I’m really cognizant of is not putting pressure on them to be that guy. When they’re meant to be the guy like Diego is this year, it’s going to happen organically. The process is sometimes a little bit longer, but there’s no doubt that we have a really talent younger group of players who are growing before our eyes. The sky’s the limit, and they’re taking all the pressure and doing well with it.”
So for now, the club will keep working, keep training, and the coaches will keep tweaking schematically. Eventually, the performances will line up with the potential of youth.
At least, that’s the hope.
“When you’re in an environment that isn’t so high-pressure, those three guys and Aiden would all blow it out of the water,” Mastroeni said. “I think the pressure results always makes it that much tighter than you typically would be.”