‘I’m living a dream’: Sergi Solans earns new RSL deal after record-setting rookie start

DENVER — Not long ago, Sergi Solans wasn’t sure Real Salt Lake was where he wanted to begin his professional career.

Now, after a record-setting start to his rookie season, he is prepared to make it his home for potentially the next five years.

Real Salt Lake announced Monday that it has signed Solans to a new contract through the 2029-30 MLS season, with a club option for 2030-31. The deal replaces the contract the 22-year-old forward signed when he joined the club in January.

“I’m living a dream,” Solans told KSL Sports Monday in the lobby of RSL’s Denver hotel. “I always say that. The first dream was to achieve the professional contract. And if someone told me six months ago, or eight months ago, that now I would be signing this extension, I would never believe that.

“So I need to be grateful for what’s happening right now, but also be proud of everything I’ve done.”

There’s plenty for Solans to be proud of.

He leads RSL with 13 goals across all competitions, including nine in MLS play. Five of the club’s last six matches in which Solans has played have ended with the Spaniard finding the net.

His nine MLS goals have already surpassed Corey Baird’s previous RSL rookie record of eight, set during his 2018 MLS Rookie of the Year campaign. Solans still has 14 regular-season matches remaining.

Sergi's just getting started in Utah pic.twitter.com/iapbGBnWIR

— Real Salt Lake (@realsaltlake) August 24, 2026

RSL wasn’t always necessarily the plan

But a long-term future in Utah wasn’t guaranteed just because RSL had drafted him.

RSL acquired the final pick of the first round of the 2025 MLS SuperDraft from the LA Galaxy for $50,000 in General Allocation Money and used it to select Solans out of Oregon State.

Solans had scored 12 goals in 10 matches during his lone season with the Beavers, but RSL wasn’t yet ready to offer him a first-team contract.

“I had conversations with John Spencer the afternoon before,” Solans said of draft day. “I was talking with him a lot, having a lot of conversation. Then my coach from that time, Oregon State, texted me saying, ‘Man, you’re drafted by RSL.’ And then I was very crazy, to be honest, but at the same time happy.”

There was a catch.

Solans still had college eligibility.

“I said, ‘Are you guys giving me a first-team deal?’” Solans recalled. “He said, ‘Not yet. I think you need one more year.’ So I decided to stay.”

Solans transferred to UCLA, where he scored 16 goals and helped the Bruins win the Big Ten championship. But before returning to college, he got an up-close look at the club that had drafted him.

Solans spent several days around RSL’s first team, an experience head coach Pablo Mastroeni still remembered Monday.

“What I saw was a guy that was really committed to a couple different things,” Mastroeni said. “One, his commitment to making two or three actions to receive the ball, which I thought was really high level from an attacking perspective. His commitment to defending and pressing was also high level.

“And his commitment to learning. He was asking me questions, knowing about the tactics, knowing that he’s only gonna be there for three days. And it’s these little moments that you can peel a lot back from a human being.”

‘The proof will always be in the actions’

There was another question Solans needed answered before he was ready to leave college: If he signed with RSL, would he actually have a chance to play?

Mastroeni didn’t make him a promise. Instead, he told Solans to look at what RSL had already done.

“There’s gonna be a lot of teams that are gonna tell you that you’re gonna get some playing time,” Mastroeni recalled telling Solans. “Just look to what we did last year. And the proof will always be in the actions.”

Mastroeni pointed to the opportunities the club had given young players, including Ari Piol, Zavier Gozo and Noel Caliskan.

“We’re not biased towards older, younger,” Mastroeni said. “We’re biased towards quality of player, quality of character, and Sergi Solans has both of those, and that’s why it’s no surprise that he’s in the position that he’s in.”

Asked Monday if Mastroeni had delivered on the opportunity he offered, Solans didn’t hesitate.

“For sure. For sure. For sure,” he said. “I think it’s both parties, like Pablo’s one, and then me proving myself. But I think when we had that conversation in December, I think he was willing to give me the opportunity, and then I had to prove myself, and so far I did.”

Nine MLS goals later, RSL decided it didn’t want to wait to secure Solans’ future.

And there was at least some reason for urgency.

Solans said his agent had begun exploring potential opportunities in Europe, though he stressed that wasn’t because he was unhappy in Utah.

“I knew that my agent was working in going back to Europe,” Solans said. “Because I have my family there. And I’m not saying I want to go, because I truly, I really like to be in America and playing in Utah, to be honest.”

His family, Solans said, understandably wants the Girona native closer to home.

“There’s also this feeling of my family’s pressing me a little bit like, ‘We would like to watch you more, like, more often.’ So I told this to my agent. My agent was trying to work, I guess, with some clubs. I have no idea.”

Then RSL came with an offer.

“They offered me the deal that was, like, honestly amazing,” Solans said. “I need to be so grateful for the first offer, because it was, like, really good.”

Whatever possibilities his agent may have been investigating, Solans said he wasn’t looking for an exit.

“My head was always here,” he said. “I was not thinking of going back to Europe.”

After scoring against FC Dallas last week, Solans was asked in Spanish whether he wanted to remain with RSL amid indications that a new contract was coming.

“Sí, sí, sí,” Solans answered.

“The truth is that I’m very happy here,” he said in Spanish. “I’ve always said that I’m very grateful to the club for the opportunity they gave me when nobody knew me.”

‘I found happiness here’

Somewhere along the way, RSL also stopped feeling simply like the club that drafted him and started to feel like his club.

Solans can identify exactly when the feeling changed.

It was his goal against the Colorado Rapids at America First Field in May, helping RSL to a 2-1 win in the first leg of the Rocky Mountain Cup.

“I think that’s when I really realized, man, I’m now part of this club,” Solans said. “Like, I have a name, you know?”

The evidence of that connection is increasingly easy to find. Solans’ name and number had already begun popping up on personalized RSL jerseys, but since the Black Diamond third kit dropped earlier this month, a striking number of the personalized versions have belonged to him.

Solans said he doesn’t want the attention simply for his own ego. He wants young players to look at the path he took from Spain to college soccer and eventually MLS and see a path they can follow.

“If you work hard, you can go to college, you prove yourself in college, and then there are a lot of clubs in the MLS that give you the opportunity to go and then prove yourself,” Solans said.

“And again, you have to prove yourself, as always in soccer. But the important thing is the opportunity.”

The new contract provides something else for a 22-year-old living an ocean away from his family: reassurance that the club believes in him.

“It’s not just playing or starting every game,” Solans said. “It’s like seeing that the club really trusts me, and the way I play and the way I score and the way I am as a person.”

That trust matters back home, too.

“I’m alone here, and I have a whole family there watching me every time, but they are also my family, so they are worried about me,” Solans said. “They have the confidence of the club that they really believe in me, that I feel happy here. 

“I found happiness here.”

Eight months after wondering whether his future was in Utah at all, Solans has an answer.

And RSL does, too.

Note: Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity. Spanish-language responses were translated into English.