‘You’ve just established a standard’: Real Salt Lake erupts for 4 goals in rout of Atlante

SANDY — Real Salt Lake needed 3 points.

It got them emphatically.

Sergi Solans, Zach Booth, Lukas Engel and Pablo Ruiz scored as RSL rolled past Atlante 4-0 Saturday night at America First Field, keeping its Leagues Cup hopes alive heading into Tuesday’s Phase One finale against FC Juárez.

After earning only one point from Tuesday’s penalty-shootout loss to Tigres UANL, head coach Pablo Mastroeni had called Saturday’s match “sudden death.”

Inside the locker room, his players were even more direct.

“We have leaders like Rafa (Cabral) in the locker room and Dre (Yedlin) and these guys, where before the game they’re talking about, ‘Listen, we keep talking about being the top team. It’s enough. We gotta go out and do the business,’” Mastroeni said.

They did.

RSL scored four goals for the first time this season, recorded just its third clean sheet and snapped a four-match winless run dating to before the World Cup break.

Afterward, Mastroeni’s message wasn’t that his team had arrived. It was that it had shown itself what should now be expected.

“You’ve just established a standard,” Mastroeni said he told his players. “And the great thing is we can celebrate it. The tough part is we’ve gotta raise the bar.”

Luna unlocks Atlante

Diego Luna didn’t score any of RSL’s four goals, but was at the center of seemingly everything it did going forward.

The Man of the Match finished with two assists, the first coming in the 17th minute after a sequence that seemed to encapsulate his night.

Luna collected the ball centrally and drew three defenders before sending it wide. He continued his run into the box, eventually receiving the ball again near the end line. With a defender all over him, Luna shifted the ball from his right foot to his left, opening a passing lane before finding Solans alone six yards from goal.

The rookie made no mistake, finishing for his 10th goal of the season in all competitions.

“Great individual play in the box with Luna and Sergi to get us going on the right foot,” Mastroeni said. “Then really kicked it up in the second half.”

Solans credited the chemistry developing between RSL’s attacking players.

“I know that Luna always inside the box looks for me,” Solans said. “I know that I had to do the movement too, so I was free and then easy finish.”

RSL survives Atlante’s response

The opening goal didn’t immediately turn the match into a rout.

Atlante appeared to equalize in the 37th minute when Jairón Charcopa finished into the far corner. But the play began when Solans had his jersey yanked hard enough to pull him off balance and dispossess him, and after a VAR review the goal was disallowed.

Five minutes later, Atlante struck the crossbar.

Then RSL nearly doubled its advantage before halftime when Noel Caliskan picked out an unmarked Solans at the back post. Goalkeeper Oscar Jimenez scrambled across his line to palm away the striker’s header and keep Atlante within one.

“We’ve played really well in some of these games that we haven’t gotten results in,” Mastroeni said. “It’s just about putting it all together. Goals change games.”

Five minutes after halftime, Luna found Booth on the right sideline.

Booth carried the ball across the top of the penalty area, moving away from goal before wrapping his left foot around a shot and tucking it inside the post.

He celebrated by pointing toward his family in the stands before breaking out a backflip.

“One of the things we’ve been working with Booth is making sure that when the ball is on the weak side, his runs are to goal,” Mastroeni said. “Because he does have breakaway speed, and his greatest asset with the ball is his change of pace.”

“Now he’s got the opportunity on the goal that he scored, which is coming inside,” Mastroeni continued. “And he’s been working on finishing with his left foot.”

Four minutes after Booth made it 2-0, RSL had its third.

Luna won a free kick on the left side and delivered a perfectly weighted ball to the back post. Morgan Guilavogui cushioned the ball into Engel’s path, and the defender finished from close range.

“Tonight we scored one on a set piece and defended really, really well on our defensive set pieces,” Mastroeni said. “I think it’s a part of the game that’s often undervalued as far as the amount of work and the amount of commitment that you put into it.”

Chances become goals

RSL created 18 shots against Tigres on Tuesday but scored only once before losing the extra Leagues Cup point in a penalty shootout.

Against Atlante, the chances finally became goals.

“We had our chances against Tigres, myself too,” Solans said. “We didn’t get the result that we were hoping for, but I think we were focused from the start. We scored the chances that we had. So I think we controlled the game from the beginning to the end.”

Even after reaching double figures in his first MLS season, the 22-year-old wasn’t entirely satisfied after seeing a shot kiss off the far post at the end of a breakaway.

“As a forward, I need to score for my confidence, for the confidence of the team, to always help the team,” Solans added. “As I’ve said before, I’m happy, but I’m not completely satisfied. I want to score as many as possible this season. Try to break the record, so we’ll try to do it.”

Ruiz keeps building

Ruiz entered in the 66th minute after making his first start in nearly two years Tuesday against Tigres.

In the 90th minute, he won possession himself as Lineker Rodrigues pressured the ball from the opposite side, drove toward the penalty area and fought through a challenge before bending a left-footed shot toward the far post.

It was Ruiz’s second goal in as many Leagues Cup matches.

Mastroeni said Ruiz’s start against Tigres was particularly important after so many of his appearances had come late in matches.

“You can see that he’s playing with a different type of mentality, with the ball, against the ball,” Mastroeni said. “His spacing, his defensive positioning is vastly improved, and those are all things that we’ve talked about over the last year.

“Credit to Pablo, who’s put his head down, waited for his opportunity, and now taking his opportunity.”

‘We need another performance like tonight’

The match became increasingly physical as it wore on, beginning with Atlante coach Miguel Herrera’s own early exit.

Herrera was sent off in the 21st minute after his bench surrounded the fourth official shortly after the Solans goal. The longtime Liga MX and former Mexico national team manager didn’t exactly disappear afterward, continuing to communicate with his staff from the stands by walkie-talkie.

It wasn’t the first time.

Herrera was ejected at halftime of Club América’s 2020 Concacaf Champions League semifinal against LAFC in Orlando, then spent the second half communicating with his staff by walkie-talkie. Concacaf added another match to his suspension for doing so.

Saturday’s match developed some of that same edge.

Luna was repeatedly fouled during one second-half sequence in which a player chopped him down from behind and then kicked him as he sprang to his feet and continued dribbling. He was immediately dragged down again, with several players eventually converging, and Alexandros Katranis later went chest-to-chest with members of the Atlante bench after another challenge.

RSL finished the match without allowing the confrontations to lead to red cards.

“They met it, they didn’t back down from it, but they also didn’t let it affect them, their performance or the result,” Mastroeni said. “I think that is really a big growth moment for our group in these type of games.”

The result leaves RSL with four points through two Phase One matches. A regulation victory over Juárez on Tuesday would get it to seven, the number the club identified after the Tigres loss as its likely minimum to have a chance of advancing.

Anything beyond that remains outside its control.

And despite Saturday’s four goals, clean sheet and long-awaited victory, Mastroeni wasn’t interested in treating it as a destination.

“This performance, if we play the same game, it might not be good enough against Juárez,” he said. “So we’ve got to double down.”

There was, however, enough time to enjoy this one.

“I’m gonna have a beer tonight or an adult soda, and then it’s on to training tomorrow,” Mastroeni said.

“It’s short-lived, I guess. Short-lived.”