Daniel Obinyan
The Real Monarchs will compete in the 2025 MLS NEXT Pro Playoffs for the first time in club history.
The Claret-and-Cobalt had failed to qualify for the playoffs in all of its years during the NEXT Pro era and had yet to appear at all in any postseason round since the famed USL Championship triumph of 2019. But victory last weekend away against LAFC 2 cemented a place in the 2025 edition and qualification for the first time in six years for Mark Lowry’s men.
Current outlook
Lowry’s side currently occupy the West fourth place, three points off the top three, and have impressed greatly throughout the regular season with 11 wins (the joint-fourth highest in the conference), eight draws, and seven defeats (the joint-third lowest) across 26 regular season matches this season. The Monarchs also rank sixth in the 14-team conference for most goals scored, with 47 scored against 39 conceded.
As is competition tradition, teams that finish within the top three places reserve the privilege of hand-selecting their opponents from the final 5th to 8th placed teams, with the last unpicked side of the four paired against the team who finishes fourth.
With the Monarchs now merely three points behind the highly coveted leading three spots, the onus and goal for Lowry and Co., surely now at this stage of the season, will be to utilize the team’s final two games towards breaking into the current order and cementing a top-three finish.
On the horizon: North Texas SC
The next assignment for Lowry’s young guns features a trip to Choctaw Stadium in a potentially tantalizing away clash against North Texas SC.
Head coach John Gall’s Texan outfit currently sit in sixth in the West standings, having amassed a 40-point total across their 26 games this season, and have won three of their last five matches, including a most recent 2-1 victory away against Minnesota United 2.
Lowry’s Monarchs equally arrive at the weekend’s contest with a ripple of wind in their sails on the back of successive victories in their last two games, including a most recent compelling 3-1 trouncing of LAFC 2 the preceding weekend.
Both sides are yet to face each other this season, with the Texans having won each of the two previous matchups in 2024, but the encouraging news for Lowry will lie in the form of their opponents’ recent home record, with Gall’s side boasting just one win and suffering four losses in their last five home games.
Pertinently, the Monarchs, on the other hand, have enjoyed three wins and two defeats across the team’s last five away games and will be aiming to make it three successive wins when Lowry’s charges take the field for the penultimate time in this regular season on Saturday.
Recent form
Real Monarchs: LWLWW
North Texas SC: LWWLW
The Individual Stories
Striker Jesus Barea continues to stand tall as the team’s talismanic forward presence and top goalscorer this term. The RSL 2025 Superdraft pick only made his Monarchs bow in late March near the start of the season and has since gone on to boast an impressive 9 goals in 16 total appearances as part of Lowry’s side, whilst also featuring periodically for the first team.
Alongside Barea also lie attackers Aiden Hezarkhani, Marcos Zambrano, midfielder Griffin Dillon, defender Ruben Mesalles, and several others of Lowry’s young gun class of 2025 who have constituted the backbone of the team’s legacy-making regular season.
Headlining that contingent is 18-year-old Hezarkhani, who continues to enjoy a stellar 2025 campaign. The RSL academy product currently ranks second in the team’s scoring chart, with 6 goals, alongside 3 assists across 19 appearances and 17 starts this season. With an abundance of talent and an increasingly burgeoning reputation, the midfielder managed another milestone, in a campaign wrought with them, with a first-ever senior appearance at the start of June, becoming the 224th different player to appear in an MLS match for RSL.
In a campaign of much success, Zambrano’s rapid ascent stands as particularly emblematic. The 20-year-old only joined the Monarchs near the end of the summer, but has enjoyed a blistering start to life on the Wasatch Front, with five goals across merely 560 minutes and eight appearances, averaging an impressive 0.6 goals per game, including a brace on only his second appearance in a 4-0 thumping of Houston Dynamo 2 in early August.
Statistical leaders
Goals: Barea: 9 / Hezarkhani: 6 / Zambrano: 5 / Mesalles: 4 / Dillon: 4 / Wolff: 3 / Sandoval: 3
Assists: Mesalles: 4 / Moisa: 4 / Hezarkhani: 3 / Wolff: 3 / Touray: 3 / Marquez: 3
Watch Lowry’s side resume their push for a podium advantage against North Texas SC, on Saturday, Sept. 27, with kickoff slated for 6:30 pm MT. Broadcast will continue to be available on MLSNEXTPro.com.
