Wasatch Soccer Sentinel

It’s been a long, long while since I’ve been able to sit down and write a Monday-morning column after a win, and let me tell you — it feels good. I still have doubts about this team (and they’re somewhat significant, I’ve got to say), but it’s nice to feel a little relaxed after a win. It wasn’t a perfect win (give me a 3-0 any day of the week), but truthfully, RSL never really truly felt in peril.

That’s a slightly weird thing to say after a match in which Rafa Cabral was drafted into action far more frequently than we’d like. Honestly, though, none of Seattle’s chances felt that worrying, in the end. Maybe it’s in part just me feeling realistically about this team (like most MLS teams) in that chances will be given up, I don’t know.

It was a nice thing to see Morgan Guilavogui given his MLS debut, and I thought he looked reasonably good, though his one-on-one miss with the goalkeeper was not encouraging. Certainly, that moment demanded more, but I think there’s plenty of evidence that Guilavogui is not necessarily a natural goalscorer. He contributed in other ways, so I’m not trying to urge him out or anything of the sort, but I do think it’s worth it as RSL fans to temper our expectations of the scoring volume that we’ll see from these players. Let’s go through our attacking depth and their goalscoring performances over the last 12 months.

• Jesus Barea — 14 goals. One of those was for RSL. 13 were for Real Monarchs. I sort of suspect he’ll continue banging them in for the Monarchs and not RSL, but we’ll see. Good outlay at that level, regardless. If he can make the jump, I’ll be very curious to see if he can reproduce it.
• Zach Booth — None. He’s been a welcome addition to the team, though it’s very clear he doesn’t retain his spot when Diego Luna returns.
• Diego Luna — 10 goals. It’s clear Luna’s going places. Will it be with us in the short-to-medium term? I don’t know. How injured is he right now? I also don’t know that. Ah.
• Zavier Gozo — 4 goals. Something on which to build a foundation.
• Aiden Hezarkhani — 7 goals. Six of those were for Real Monarchs. This kid’s something.
• Morgan Guilavogui — 2 goals. He scored more at FC St. Pauli (7 goals across 27 games) in all competitions in the 24/25 season) but the last 12 months has not been kind to him.
• Victor Olatunji — 5 goals. Four of those came for Real Salt Lake, having joined in the summer transfer window. Scoring four in eight is nice, but I’m not 100% certain that should be our expectation for his scoring outlay, given his historical performances. I’d love to eat my hat here.
• Ari Piol — 2 goals. We’ll see how bad this injury is. We know he’s not a great goalscorer, though.
• Sergi Solans — N/A. This is his first professional deal. We don’t count non-professional play in a player’s statistics in this, do we? I can’t imagine it’s actually that transferable. Nothing against the player.
• Tyler Wolff — None. At this point he’s sometimes not getting off the bench for Real Monarchs. Hmm.

Where does this leave RSL’s goals in 2026? I think it’s a little bit of an unknown right now. It could be that Victor Olatunji goes on a tear when he eventually returns from his eye injury (it must be a gnarly eye injury, poor guy). It could be that one of the youth prospects (Gozo and Hezarkhani in particular) or recent-ish draft picks (Solans and Barea) get into some form. It could be that Diego Luna scores 30 goals and then leaves after the World Cup window. It could be that RSL struggles mightily to put them in the back of the net. At this point, we don’t really know, and I’m not a great prognosticator over here.

We’ll leave that topic there for today. Let’s take a few minutes and prepare for the week ahead.

This week in Real Salt Lake

• Real Salt Lake and Atlanta United square off. There’s a lot of pride in this one, for me. Atlanta United, for some reason unbeknownst to me, have adopted the golden spike as their symbol. You know where the historic golden spike was hammered in? Utah Territory. They’ve co-opted our history. If I were in that locker room, you know I’d be giving them all a history lesson (that I hastily researched on Wikipedia five minutes before I walked in). It’s almost as bad as St. Louis City SC taking “SLCSC,” which rightly belongs — yes — to Salt Lake City. And the whole time, the club just sat back and let it happen. A shambles. Anyway, we’ll talk more about this game soon, though I’ll be at a family wedding during the match, so I’ll be watching this one on tape delay. Got to make sure that VCR is set up. Saturday, March 7, 5:30 p.m.
• Real Monarchs take on Sporting KC II. Is the SKC second team as poor as the first team? I guess we’ll find out! Sunday, March 8, 5 p.m.
• We’re inching up to the March 14 opener for Utah Royals. Nice.

Alright, we’ll chat soon.