Looking to extend their unbeaten streak to five, Real Salt Lake face a struggling Sporting Kansas City club in a Western Conference tilt on Saturday in Sandy, Utah.
Salt Lake (3-1-1, 10 points) hasn’t dropped a match since its 1-0 season-opening loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps on Feb. 21. For head coach Pablo Mastroeni’s team, the hot start has been propelled by several eager newcomers. Salt Lake has seen eight rookies make their MLS debuts across the first five outings, and in turn, motivate the veterans.
“I think it’s been really impressive, because what it’s done is light a fire under all of the experienced guys,” Mastroeni said of the first-year additions. “I think that’s what really brings the group together. The level of training this year in the first couple of months has been better than I’ve seen in the last five years that I’ve been here.”
Of the new faces, Sergi Solans has made the quickest offensive impact, sharing the team lead with Aiden Hezarkhani with two goals.
Salt Lake, which has won each of its two home matches, welcomes a Kansas City team desperate to emerge from the conference basement. That gives Mastroeni’s team all the more reason to not give the visitors any hope.
“Just because we’ve had a decent start, it doesn’t mean we can rest on our laurels,” Mastroeni said. “MLS is a crazy league. It’s a league where any team can win on any given day. It’s on us to be better than we were in our last performance.”
Last time out, Salt Lake tied host San Diego FC 2-2 on March 22.
Sporting Kansas City (1-3-1, 4 points), meanwhile, own the second-worst goal differential (minus-6) in the Western Conference. First-year head coach Raphael Wicky hasn’t had a seamless start to his Kansas City tenure, paired with the fact that the team had a major overhaul from last year’s 20-loss campaign.
Sporting KC signed 14 new players this year — most in the MLS. Wicky’s team hopes it already hit its low point, as it fell 4-1 at home against the Colorado Rapids in their last match on March 21.
“All we can do is recover and keep going and keep believing,” Wicky said. “We have shown that we can compete much better than we did (against Colorado).”
Dejan Joveljic leads Kansas City with three goals, while Lasse Berg Johnsen and Shapi Suleymanov have each scored once.
–Field Level Media
