Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
SALT LAKE CITY — Real Salt Lake players and staff preached repeatedly after last season's first-round playoff exit that winning the MLS Cup is the club's goal, and they believe they have the pieces to get it done.
Fast forward four months to the start of the 2024 season Wednesday against Lionel Messi and Inter Miami, and the Claret and Cobalt will know very early on whether or not they have what it takes to match up with the best of MLS.
"I think it's only human to fall victim to the magnitude of this game and playing against the greatest player of all time to open up the season," head coach Pablo Mastroeni said. "The one thing that we've talked quite a bit about in preparation for this game is controlling the controllables, and in particular each player has a job to do every time the ball moves. If the internal monologue is, 'I have a job to do now. I have a job to do now,' then you stay in the present."
Each player's "job" on the pitch might be more defined than ever heading into a season with nine or more returning starters from 2023. Last year's major acquisition, Chicho Arango, was named the club's full-time captain this week — just the sixth in club history — and leads a key quartet alongside Diego Luna, Andres Gomez and Pablo Ruiz that Mastroeni described as RSL's "attacking core."
Though all four of these players were on the roster in 2023, they played limited minutes together, with Arango debuting in July and Ruiz suffering a season-ending injury in August. Luna came on as the team's breakout star down the stretch in the playoffs, but Gomez struggled to find consistent minutes after a strong first half of the season.
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— Caleb Turner (@calebturner23) February 19, 2024
Mastroeni believes the team will be "quite a handful" with these players on the field together and "engaged" in doing their jobs at each point along the way. Ruiz looks to be particularly important after the team dropped five of its six matches following his meniscus injury last season. But in the end, the team's ceiling is as high as its 20-year-old wunderkind Luna can take it in 2024.
"I want to be the guy that the team can rely on when things get tough," Luna said. "And then as a group, we just need to continue with that hard work, that dog mentality that we have, and then our individual success and team success will show. I think once you get your mindset right, all our attributes and the players we have are definitely good enough and ready to put on a show this year."
The young maestro made his United States men's national team senior debut in January and was described by one journalist as being "destined for greatness" during Mastroeni's season preview press conference with MLS media on Monday.
Luna appears to be a lock to travel with the U.S. to the Paris Olympics in July, but could also factor into the country's Copa America squad for the tournament taking place in the U.S. starting in June.
It's hard to remember an RSL player with that pedigree of hype at the national and international level, and the player who describes his preferred position as the "10" attacking midfielder will go up against perhaps the best to ever wear the number Wednesday in Miami against Messi.
The match airs on Apple TV MLS Season Pass beginning at 6 p.m. MST.
