HERRIMAN, Utah (Thursday, July 10, 2025) – Real Salt Lake (6-10-4, 22 points, 13th West / 23rd Shield) continues a very busy month of July with Saturday’s 7:30p MT kickoff against the Houston Dynamo (7-9-5, 26 points, 8th West / 18th Shield). RSL welcomes the return of 2025 MLS All-Star Diego Luna from his recent U.S. National Team duty, where the Gold Cup icon provided three goals and added two assists in six games for Mauricio Pochettino’s side, which dropped last Sunday’s final to Mexico.
This Saturday’s contest is also available via Apple TV+ / MLS Season Pass, with Mark Followill and Warren Barton (ENG) on the call, as are Moises Linares and Max Cordaro (SPN). Iconic RSL voice David James and former MLS goalkeeper Jay Nolly will call the game for KSL Sports Radio (1160 AM / 97.5 FM), with Nelson Moran in his 21st season as RSL’s Spanish radio home on both 102.3 KDUT FM / 106.3 FM KBMG.
RSL remains at home after capturing seven of possible nine points thus far in June and July, with last Saturday’s scintillating 3-2 victory over visiting St. Louis CITY SC the Club’s first three-goal performance since a 3-1 win at San Diego in late April, and just its second game featuring a trio of scores. Featuring first-half goals from DF Noel Caliksan – his first-ever MLS score – and MF Diogo Gonçalves, en route to a 2-0 halftime lead, Caliskan’s far-post half-volley, RSL has now scored first in 13 of 22 games this year across all competitions, amassing a 6W-4L-3T mark.
With a 4-5-1 (W-L-T) mark on the Wasatch Front thus far this year in both MLS and Champions Cup matches, RSL now looks ahead to eight MLS reg. season and at least three Leagues Cup games to be played at America First Field through the 2025 “Decision Day.” A year ago, RSL amassed a 12-3-4 (W-L-T) record at home, where the Club has traditionally enjoyed a fortress-like record of success, winning nearly 70% of games and averaging just under two points per game in parts of 17 seasons across all competitions in Sandy.
Including last weekend v. St. Louis, RSL has now recorded a 40W-8L-15T record when scoring first during the 161-game Pablo Mastroeni era, with all six RSL victories this season coming when scoring first (Seattle, Houston, LA Galaxy, at San Diego, D.C. and St. Louis). Four of the eight losses under Mastroeni when taking the 1-0 lead since August, 2021, have come this season (at home against Herediano / San Diego, away at Nashville, home against Vancouver), along with the May 10 draw at Dallas, the May 28 deadlock at Austin, as well as the late June 1-1 knot at KC.
Mastroeni’s team looks to extend its active unbeaten streak to four games, facing recent nemesis Houston for the 11th occasion in the last three seasons across all competitions. Back on March 15 of this year, RSL saw Gonçalves score the fourth-fastest goal in Club history just 40 seconds in on a Luna assist in an eventual 2-1 victory at Shell Energy Stadium. Houston had eliminated RSL in both the 2023 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup at the semifinal stage, as well as that season’s MLS Cup Playoffs, with two of the three games in the first-round series decided by penalty-kick shootouts. Last year, it was the Dynamo which eliminated RSL from its 2024 Leagues Cup participation in the final game of the group stage.
Dropping back-to-back results is also rare during the former two-time USMNT World Cup performer’s reign. Since Mastroeni seized the head coaching reins in August, 2021, RSL has dropped consecutive games just 14 times in 161 matches during the Mastroeni era, winning 28 and drawing 15 in “bounceback” contests. An RSL victory or draw this weekend against Houston would give RSL a four-game unbeaten run for the first time since last September, when RSL carried a seven-game streak without a loss through the end of the MLS reg. season and playoffs.
The first half of the 2025 RSL season witnessed several RSL players achieve various milestones, as 18-year-old Academy product Zavier Gozo – who graduated with several Academy teammates in late May in Herriman – earned his first-ever run of MLS starts, the Eagle Mountain, Utah-native going the full 90 minutes on the attack in nine of the last 11 games.
Brazilian GK and RSL “Iron Man” Rafael Cabral – the lone RSL player to have appeared in every minute of the Club’s 22 games played across all competitions this season – logged his fifth clean sheet of the season in RSL’s June 14 home win over D.C. United.
Another RSL Academy product, then 17-year-old M/F Aiden Hezarkhani, made his MLS debut before hometown friends and family on May 31 at LA Galaxy. Hezarkhani – the 224th player to log at least one MLS minute for RSL in its 21-year history – celebrated his 18th birthday on the RSL gameday at Kansas City on June 28.
RSL FW William Agada – who scored his first goal for the Club at Austin on May 28 – saw his former Kansas City captain, winger Johnny Russell, follow suit by finding the back of the net for RSL in consecutive June games, after the free-agent acquisition arrived in Utah in late April.
Second-year D/M Noel Caliskan has started and played impressively for the full 90 minutes at right back in each of the last nine contests, scoring his first-ever MLS goal and making his 2025 first-team debuts. The German-born Caliskan was drafted out of Loyola Marymount University in 2023 by the Timbers, for whom he played MLS, Open Cup and MLS NEXT Pro action during his rookie season before signing with Real Monarchs a year ago.
That 3-1 victory at San Diego on April 26 also marked Head Coach Pablo Mastroeni’s 100th career coaching win across all competitions for the two Rocky Mountain Cup competitors, RSL (2021-present) and Colorado (2014-17). The former U.S. World Cup stalwart has now amassed 102 wins, 113 losses and 77 draws across all competitions for the Utah/Denver-based sides. Last June in Kansas City, Mastroeni earned his 50th win across all competitions with RSL in a wild 4-3 road decision, with the 2-0 reg. season win over LA Galaxy on April 5 marking his 50th MLS victory with RSL. Since August, 2021, in Utah, Mastroeni’s all-time coaching record is now 64-57-42 (W-L-T).
Away from home, RSL’s 2-6-4 / 10-point road record this season across all competitions has underperformed fifth-year Head Coach Pablo Mastroeni’s track record, with each of the last two seasons marking the Claret-and-Cobalt’s best road campaigns in team history. The 2023 side posted an 11W-8L-5T away mark across all competitions, a record which includes both that year’s Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup Semifinal loss to Houston, and its road loss and elimination draw in the first and third games of the teams’ 2023 Audi MLS Cup Playoff series on the Shell Energy Stadium turf.
A year ago, Mastroeni’s men registered the second-most road points in RSL history, with a 5W-4L-8T MLS reg. season mark, one which does NOT includes its heartbreaking, multi-goal Leagues Cup elimination loss to the Dynamo following a home win over Atlas FC. RSL will travel for a rare midweek match on Wednesday, July 16, at Portland Timbers, prior to returning home next Saturday, July 19, against Eastern Conference power FC Cincinnati. Again, tickets for all America First Field events are available at www.RSL.com/tickets.
During each of Pablo’s previous three full seasons at the RSL helm, the Club has increased its annual point total (47 in 2022, 50 in 2023 and 59 last year), while increasing its Western Conference table position as well (7th in 2022, 5th in 2023 and 3rd last year). The 2025 campaign features RSL’s pursuit of a Conference-best fifth consecutive postseason berth, a seventh in the last eight seasons and its 15th in the last 18 years.
Last year saw RSL advance to the MLS Cup Playoffs for a fourth consecutive occasion, the sixth time in seven seasons (2020 the lone exception), and for the 14th time in the last 17 seasons since first qualifying in 2008 (2015, 2017 the other outliers). The 2024 MLS regular season reached an all-time high of 59 points for RSL, which finished third in the Western Conference and sixth overall in the 29-team MLS shield race, while also establishing a new all-time scoring high of 65 goals.
