Real Salt Lake take a two-match winning streak with them to Saint Paul, Minn., on Saturday for a key Western Conference match against Minnesota United.
It’s the final match until July 22 for both teams heading into the World Cup break.
Real Salt Lake (8-4-1, 25 points) are in third place, four points behind Western Conference co-leaders Vancouver and San Jose, and come in off a 2-1 victory over the Colorado Rapids last Saturday. Sergi Solans scored the game-winner in the 68th minute with a header off a Juan Manuel Sanabria cross, and 19-year-old Zavier Gozo scored his third goal in two games.
“For me, he’s a unicorn,” RSL coach Pablo Mastroeni said of Gozo, who is tied with Solans for the team lead in goals with six. “Very rarely do you have a guy that is as fast as he is that can maintain the speed and endurance over 90 minutes.”
RSL are 7-1-0 at home this season but have won just once in five away matches (1-3-1).
“I think the most important thing is just to get three points, get the win, especially with a break coming up because of World Cup,” forward Aiden Hezarkhani said. “It’s important that we send it off the right way.”
Minnesota United (6-5-3, 21 points) are in a three-team logjam for sixth place with Houston and Los Angeles FC. The Loons swept both matches with RSL last season and are unbeaten in their last five against them.
Minnesota is in the midst of a three-match winless streak (0-2-1) and comes in off a 2-1 loss at New England last Saturday. Kelvin Yeboah tied it on a penalty kick in the first half but Luca Langoni answered with the game-winner in the 49th minute.
Despite his team’s recent struggles, Loons coach Cameron Knowles has been happy with his team’s play in the first half of the season.
“I think we’ve made significant progress from the start until now,” Knowles said. “We’ve gone through a patch now where we’ve played relatively well in these games but have not got results. We had a stretch of really good results and performances, and hopefully we can finish this out with a strong performance and a good result.”
–Field Level Media
