Wasatch Soccer Sentinel

Well, the season’s upon us, and it’s mid-February. Do you remember when the MLS season started in late March? I do. It’s so cold in Salt Lake in mid-February. That’s not particularly important — at least not for the first match of the week (two matches inside a week to start the season — wild), which takes Real Salt Lake to San Jose, Costa Rica to take on CS Herediano. The second match is on the road, too: RSL travels to San Jose, California —

Wait. Two away matches, both in a city named San Jose? In mid-February?

It’s a weird way to start the year.

That first match is the first big thing I’ll be anticipating this week; the second is the third. (The next episode Severance is the second big thing. It’s just so good.)

I would love to talk to you about who might play, how RSL will play, that sort of thing. But two preseason matches alone are not solid evidence, given we couldn’t really watch any others without being there in person. (I was not there in person. I briefly considered it. If the team had gone to Tucson, like they used to … well, I’d have seen every match, I think. It would’ve been glorious.) I think there are a few things we can say at least a little definitively, though. We’ll start at the back and go to the front.

Rafael Cabral is almost certain to start the season in goal. I was honestly pretty confused about this signing until news emerged about Zac MacMath needing offseason surgery to correct an issue that troubled him through the end of the 2024 campaign. I’m still confused about the Gavin Beavers departure, though I do think I understand the material conditions there. I am more confused, instead, about how RSL let it get to this point, because I would have hoped that Beavers would have been first in line for a starting role in the event of a MacMath injury. I guess we’ll just look forward here, though.

The big question I have around Cabral is if he’s a good enough goalkeeper to justify letting go of Beavers, whatever you think of his departure aside. I don’t think we have evidence of that yet. Cabral’s overall statistics over the last five years are fairly similar to MacMath’s, but there’s a distinct difference in how much Cabral operates outside the penalty area. That’s an area where MacMath surprisingly did quite well (when he joined, he was so nervous in these situations that I would not have expected him to develop that skill at this point in his career) but is certainly not an area where we should expect much from Cabral.

The back line remains largely unchanged, and I suspect you’ll see Bode Hidalgo join the generally preferred Justen Glad, Brayan Vera and Alexandros Katranis. This is not necessarily because I think Hidalgo is a clear first choice, but more that Andrew Brody apparently didn’t appear in preseason.

The central midfield appears largely unchanged, too, with two big things to note. First, Pablo Ruiz has returned to action after a season-ending injury early in 2024. Will he return to a deeper role, as he typically has for RSL in his career, or will he emerge at the 10 he was reportedly set to play last year? Time will tell on that one. Second, Emeka Eneli appears to have won the armband for RSL. I like that, I think. I don’t know if there’s something to be said about Justen Glad not being given the armband, given how long he’s been at the club and how long he’s been talked about for that role, but I do think there’s value in evaluating your options effectively. Certainly, I think Eneli will be a better captain than the club’s in 2024. The key pairing here will certainly be Braian Ojeda and Eneli.

The wingers and attacking midfield roles — the 3 in the 4-2-3-1 — are likely not too different from the outset. Perhaps Luna will be on the left, as he has been under RSL coach Pablo Mastroeni, or perhaps he’ll be in the middle. I suppose we don’t yet know really if he’s going to be starting the season playing or recovering from a fairly nasty nose break sustained during U.S. national team duty. The right is Dominic Marczuk’s spot to lose — he’s a player I’m genuinely excited to see in 2025. The other spot in the three probably goes to Diogo Goncalves by default, but I’m feeling more trepidation than anything. If Luna doesn’t appear, evidence points to Lachlan Brook as the next up.

Forward holds the biggest competition for RSL. With Chicho Arango (17), Andres Gomez (13) and Anderson Julio (9) gone from the 2024 roster, 62 percent of the team’s goalscoring has departed. Only Diego Luna (8) scored more than three goals for the team among those remaining. Unless RSL makes an unexpected move, they seem likely to try Forster Ajago, Elias Manoel and Ariath Piol. That group is worth discussing in more depth.

Ajago is the player we’ve seen the most of for RSL, owing to his playing for the team in one streamed preseason match. He’s also probably the biggest unknown, with only 379 professional minutes under his belt. He also said on a profile at Duke that his favorite food is Jollof rice, which is delicious, so yeah. I don’t know. He did score a lot of goals at Duke, which is cool, but it’s also not super meaningful.

Manoel is the best-known quantity of the group, having played a bench role for New York Red Bulls over the last three seasons. In 2024, he played nearly every regular season match, starting half of them, and he scored eight goals. His goalscoring record is strong, but the question remains: Will additional starts correspond to a statistical increase? The signs point to a chance here. He’s only 23, so he’s far from his peak. This was an interesting signing that has some positive signs already, but notably, we didn’t see Manoel in preseason.

Piol is a fairly substantial unknown. He has just 14 senior matches to his name, scoring four goals over 492 minutes. That’s not awful for a 20-year-old, but can he carry forward in a considerably more competitive league? I have my concerns — it’s on Piol to put those to rest.

There are more things to grapple with, but there’s only so much one can do without seeing the team play in a meaningful match. Preseason, while fun, is rarely going to tell you much about a team’s performance. The conditions simply are different. After the last preseason match against RBNY, the team went on to play an immediate second scrimmage directly after with a completely different lineup. There really is only so much we can have learned from two streamed matches, so I suppose we’ll have to wait to make more definitive declarations until later in the week. See you then.