In ever-fluid Major League Soccer, where rosters are frequently overturned and players rarely spend more than a few years with one team, Nick Rimando has been a bit of an anomaly with Real Salt Lake.
The 35-year-old goalkeeper has been in an RSL uniform longer than any player on the club and only Brad Davis has been with the Houston Dynamo longer than Rimando has patrolled net in the Claret and Cobalt. Now with his 100th win with RSL on Saturday, he joins elite company, as only Kevin Hartman (116 with the LA Galaxy from 1997-2006) and Zac Thornton (109 with the Chicago Fire from 1998-2006) have won over 100 matches with a single club.
After the match on Saturday, Rimando had a sense of humor when asked about hitting milestone.
“It means that I’m old,” he grinned when asked about reaching 100 victories on Real Salt Lake’s postgame show on KMYU. “It means that I’ve been around for a while.”
Rimando came to RSL in 2007 – or rather, in 2006 in a trade with D.C. United that also brought then-U.S. National Team midfielder Freddy Adu, then again after a short-lived trade to the New York Red Bulls that saw Rimando returned to RSL just two weeks later. Since then, he has been a stalwart in front of the net, backstopping Real to two MLS Cup appearances, including lifting the MLS Cup in 2009.
Since his arrival on the Wasatch Front, no goalkeeper has won more MLS matches. Nor reached the playoffs in more consecutive seasons.
And while the 100-win milestone may not have been something Rimando was targeting any more than any other victory, the significance of the mark wasn’t lost on him even in the moments after the match.
“It’s special because RSL has a special place in my heart,” Rimando said. “I would have loved to get it in front of my fans, but there’s going to be a lot more to come.”
Rimando needed just two saves to secure the victory, and while they were far from simple stops, the defense in front of him was able to limit the danger coming from Chicago despite caution being thrown to the wind late in the match when RSL held a 2-0 lead.
“It got a little hectic in the end. They were throwing guys forward, but that’s what you expect when the home team is down and we dealt with it pretty well,” Rimando said. “Good effort from the boys in front of me. We were the better team today and we deserved to win that one. We grinded it out to the end and that’s what it takes to get points for us.”
For more on Rimando’s milestone, click here.
