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| I can see you don't care.... |
I’m here to tell the kids that joining MLS as an expansion team today is nothing like what it was in the mid-2000s. Back then, the incoming front office couldn’t sign even one designated player – the Designated/aka “Beckham Rule” wasn’t codified until 2007 – which left any incoming team picking through the same crappy, then exhausted buffet, as every other team in the league. That’s the MLS Chivas USA and Real Salt Lake stepped into in 2005 and, golly, does “stepped into” get right to it. To their (very temporary) credit, Chivas USA turned over a competitive roster within one season – notably, by signing some soon-to-be famous young Americans - but it took RSL four seasons to climb that mini-Everest. They built their first, best teams around rightful MLS legends like Kyle Beckerman, (now Miami assistant coach) Javier Morales, and long-time anchor/dream-killer, Nick Rimando, but they also did some next-level work in terms of finding great complimentary players like Fabian Espindola and, to turn the backline into a wall, Jamison Olave and Nat Borchers. When it all finally came together with a couple players who understood their roles and played them well – e.g., Ned Grabavoy and Will Johnson as shuttlers in a midfield-four diamond – they became one of MLS 2.0’s most consistent – and dangerous – teams. RSL didn’t just make the 2008 playoffs, they pushed to the semifinals. Just one season later, they raised MLS Cup 2009 by holding them off in regulation and through extra-time, until they dealt a pre-peak Los Angeles Galaxy team one of the most famous Rimando-ings in MLS history. All that success turned head coach Jason Kreis into not just a hot commodity, but the subject (or is it an object?) of a campaign that tried to whisper him to the U.S. Men’s National Team hot-seat for a season or two. That team turned Rio Tinto Stadium into a fortress with a 29-home-game unbeaten streak that started in June 6, 2009 (their road form, on the other hand…), but even that triumphal time included one of the most sharply painful moments in MLS history. RSL reached the final of the 2010-2011 CONCACAF Champions’ League tournament and, after drawing Liga MX’s Monterrey 2-2 in Mexico, all they needed to become the first MLS team to hoist the revamped regional club championship trophy was a keep Monterrey off the board in the fortress they’d built. All that promise came undone when some guy named Humberto Andres Suavo Pontivo scored at the 45th minute for Monterrey and, even with their (then-)best all-time roster and flashy forward Alvaro Saborio on board, RSL couldn’t pull back that one goal. RSL survived the blow and, with the balance of the core still intact, they reached the semifinals again in 2011 and MLS Cup again in 2013. They ultimately lost that game, but the success head coach Jason Kreis enjoyed between 2008-2013 made him not just a hot commodity, but the subject (or is it an object?) of a campaign that tried to whisper him to the U.S. Men’s National Team hot seat. Smal wonder he checked out after that season to take the reins at New York City FC (before they even had horses, it bears noting), but player by player and season by season, the members of that team either aged out or moved on. As you’ll see below, RSL never fully slipped all the way under the waves – they’ve made the last eight in the playoffs four times since 2013, including a trip to the playoffs in 2021 - but they have struggled with getting enough quality on the same roster in the same season to take them that vital one step further. They have improved at finding the odd great/promising young player (e.g., Diego Luna), including on the DP market player (e.g., Cristian Arango), and they have a respectable youth system (see Justen Glad, Adrian Brody(?)), but they remain a small-ish market team in a league where that gets harder every season.
Total Joy Points: 16
How They Earned Them (& How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
MLS Cup: 2009
MLS Cup Runner-Up: 2013
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 2008, 2011, 2021
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 2010, 2012, 2014, 2018, 2019
CCL Semifinals: 2011
CCL Quarterfinals: 2016
U.S. Open Cup Runner-Up: 2013
Long-Term Tendencies
Once they crawled out of the 2005-07 dumpster fire, RSL found the most reliable path to trophies: fielding a rock-solid defense and setting competent attacking players loose in front of that wall. And yet, fun-fact about RSL’s best seasons: even with Javier Morales for an ace and (what the hell?) Joao Plata running ahead of him, RSL stayed right around the MLS average for goals scored in most of the seasons between 2008 and 2014. They tipped well over average just once in that run - the 2013 MLS Cup-losing season (and just one more time since) – but RSL has a long and generally uninterrupted history of average attacking numbers. Their fortunes soured right around the same time the defenses went soft, with the squishiest points coming between 2017 and 2021. A freakin’ terrible attack killed their hopes in the crib in 2022, but, as noted above, their prospects have ticked upwards in recent seasons and that coincided with a tightening of the defense.
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| I can see Pablo cycling through the half-time pepper. |
In a phrase, holy hot streak, Batman! With so many teams stumbling around them, RSL led the West a couple times over the 2024 regular season and, when Arango was on-form (dude had a strong season), they looked like a plausible bet to stay on top. Watching from a distance, some of that seemed to follow from head coach Pablo Mastroeni filling them with belief on cult-leader levels, but career seasons for young talents like the now-departed Andres Gomez and Diego Luna helped, certainly, and with a fairly sturdy and consistent defense buying time for the attack, they even survived midfield madman Pablo Ruiz missing nearly all of the season. Their best form dried up by the beginning of July and, despite closing the 2024 regular season with two wins (at San Jose and versus Vancouver made that easier), RSL entered the playoffs as a shell of the team from the spring and early summer. I doubt it surprised many when they fell flat against a surging Minnesota United FC team in the first (official) round of the playoffs, despite having home-field advantage for the series.
Questions for Their 2025 Season
Whether they can play through an entire season without getting gutted by injuries, as much as anything, or whether a foolish flash of red (plus some injuries) from, say, Arango will throw them into disarray over three, four games at a crucial moment in the season. A full year of Ruiz starting would (or could) carry them a long way, but that could be magical thinking and me seeing a player who checks a crazy number of my favorite boxes. Their overall/final numbers looked better than flopping in the first round of the playoffs, so maybe it won’t take all that much. The most important thing they'll need to do, however, is keep up with the Western Conference’s better-resourced, aka, Seattle and the two LA franchises – that or hitting their stride at the right time, so they can sweep the leg, or otherwise knee-cap them. Again, I got the impression that RSL's legs deserted them down the stretch, so maybe they'll need to think harder about minutes management next season.
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