RSL rested and ready for red-hot Leon in Leagues Cup quarterfinal

COMMERCE CITY, Colo. — Real Salt Lake spent the weekend resting for this.

Club Leon spent it winning again.

RSL made 10 changes to its starting lineup in Saturday’s 2-1 loss at Orlando City, prioritizing Tuesday night’s Leagues Cup quarterfinal against Leon at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park.

Whether that decision worked, head coach Pablo Mastroeni said Monday, won’t be known until the final whistle.

“We’ll see after the match,” Mastroeni said. “I love this phrase, ‘Man makes plans and God laughs.’ I think, given all the information that we have available to us, it’s the right decision. But only after can we assess whether or not it worked out.”

Mastroeni saw fatigue when RSL lost 4-3 to FC Dallas Wednesday night, its eighth match in a little more than a month. With a place in the Leagues Cup semifinals at stake, he wanted to remove that variable.

“The one thing I wanna eliminate is the chance to be fatigued,” Mastroeni said. “So eliminating one variable, now we’re talking about the plan and the execution.”

Leon comes in rolling

La Fiera has won six consecutive matches across Liga MX and Leagues Cup, scoring 11 goals while allowing four during the run.

León opened the streak with a 1-0 Liga MX win over Pachuca before sweeping the Leagues Cup opening phase as the only Liga MX team to take all nine available points.

It was no walk in the park.

Leon beat Nashville SC 1-0, Orlando City 2-1 and Inter Miami 3-2, all on the road, to finish as the top Liga MX seed in the tournament.

Then it went home and kept winning.

Leon beat Necaxa 2-1 on Aug. 17 and followed it Friday with a 2-0 victory over Monterrey despite playing the final half hour with 10 men. Leon sits eighth in the young Liga MX Apertura table with nine points through five matches.

At the center of their run has been 23-year-old Colombian attacker Daniel Arcila, who has scored in all six victories, bagging seven goals during the streak.

Mastroeni compared Leon’s ability to break forward to what RSL saw against Dallas.

“They’re all technical players, but they’re really dynamic,” Mastroeni said. “They’re super dangerous in transition, and I think that’s the phase of the game where they’ll ask a lot of the questions.”

Rested for a reason

Sergi Solans didn’t see the field in Orlando and the rookie forward acknowledged Monday that the break came at a good time.

“I always want to play,” Solans said in Spanish. “But after talking with the coaches and other teammates, they decided to give us a game off. I think it was a very good decision because the truth is we’ve played a lot of games.”

Mastroeni said Solans’ physical output has been “through the roof” this season and called him one of RSL’s most important attacking players.

“The Mexican teams are more dangerous in transition,” Solans said. “They’re more vertical than in MLS, but I don’t think they’re as organized defensively. I think that’s where we can do more damage. If we maintain the structure that we’ve been using, I think we can be very, very dangerous and create a lot of chances to turn into goals.”

RSL did plenty of that during the Leagues Cup opening phase, scoring eight goals while allowing just one in matches against Tigres, Atlante and FC Juárez. After drawing Tigres 1-1, RSL rolled past Atlante 4-0 and Juárez 3-0 to reach the quarterfinals.

Solans scored against both Atlante and Juárez, continuing a rookie season that earned him a new contract Monday.

Midfielder Pablo Ruiz has also turned back the clock during the tournament, scoring twice while providing the kind of midfield magic that made him one of RSL’s most important players in 2023.

Ruiz suffered a serious right knee injury in RSL’s 2023 Leagues Cup loss to LAFC, then tore the ACL in his left knee shortly after returning in 2024. After working his way back again, even through stretches without regular minutes, Ruiz earned a start against Tigres in this year’s Leagues Cup opener and scored his first goal since 2023. He continued his resurgence with a goal off the bench against Atlante.

Three games from a trophy

RSL and Leon have met once before, also in Leagues Cup.

RSL beat Leon 3-1 at America First Field in the 2023 Round of 32, scoring three times in the final 20 minutes to erase a 1-0 deficit.

The stakes are higher this time.

The winner advances to face Toluca or Austin FC in the semifinals and moves within one victory of qualifying for the 2027 Concacaf Champions Cup.

So RSL is two wins from Concacaf qualification and three from lifting a trophy, and Mastroeni wants them to come out swinging Tuesday night.

“The first 15 minutes will be crucial in this game,” Mastroeni said. “A lot of times it’s boxers in the ring, and they wanna know what they’re bringing. Are they bringing heat early? Are they jabbing? Are they gonna wait for the counterpunch?”

A home game, 500 miles from home

RSL earned the right to host Tuesday’s quarterfinal, just not in Utah.

America First Field was booked more than a year in advance for a Noah Kahan concert Tuesday night, much to the wrath of RSL supporters who wanted to attend their club’s biggest match of the season at home.

So RSL headed east instead, landing at the home of Rocky Mountain Cup rival Colorado Rapids.

Defender Justen T. Glad, still sidelined with an adductor injury, made the trip with RSL to support his teammates.

Ownership also decided it wanted some company.

Miller Sports + Entertainment offered complimentary tickets to verified RSL supporters willing to make the roughly 500-mile trip from Utah to Commerce City. Around 600 tickets had been requested and were being processed ahead of the match, with multiple buses filled for the trip. Ownership is picking up the cost of both the tickets and bus transportation.

For Mastroeni, where the match is being played matters less than what RSL does once it gets there. He wants a complete performance.

“This game’s gonna be 95-plus minutes,” Mastroeni said. “My hope is that I’m gonna have to rotate quite a few players after this game for the weekend because they are not just physically exhausted, but cognitively spent and emotionally drained.

“And that’s what it’s gonna take to win this game.”

How to watch

Who: Real Salt Lake vs. Club Leon
When: Tuesday, Aug. 25, 8:30 p.m. MT
Where: Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, Commerce City, Colorado
TV/Streaming: Apple TV