October 6, 2024 – National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL)
Utah Royals FC News Release
SAN JOSE, Calif. – Real Salt Lake (15-7-11, 56 Pts, t-3rd West) extended the Club’s active five-game unbeaten run with an impressive 1-0 win away at San Jose Earthquakes, the Utah side recording a second consecutive clean sheet at PayPal Park on Saturday night.
Bay Area native and MLS All-Star MF Diego Luna scored a thumping drive from outside the penalty box 12 minutes from full time as RSL Head Coach Pablo Mastroeni’s men clinched a top four seed and home-field advantage in the 2024 MLS Cup Playoffs, now tied with Seattle in the third overall position in the Western Conference standings entering Major League Soccer’s Oct. 19 Decision Day..
RSL also now need just one more win, in its final game against Vancouver, to establish a new all-time single season point record of 59 points, surpassing the 57 points accrued back in 2012, whilst a draw in its concluding game would equal the long-standing record.
GK Zac MacMath earned his sixth clean sheet of the 2024 campaign. The shutout is also his 29th for Real Salt Lake, in 97 career reg. season contests.
With yet another shutout, the result also represented the team’s second consecutive clean sheet, and ninth overall of the season, and its first successive clean sheet stretch since its pair earned on April 13 and 20, in 0-0 and 4-0 results against Columbus and Chicago respectively
RSL remain in the running for one of the 10 2025 CONCACAF Champions Cup spots and could clinch it with a third-place end-of-regular-season Western Conference finish.
Midfielder Diego Luna’s second-half strike now, against his hometown team and former academy side, now moves him up to seven goals in domestic competitions this year, to go with his 12 assists.
RSL, in the 2024 season, have now earned the second-most road points of all time in franchise history, (23) and behind only its 2023 campaign (28).
Tonight’s win extends the Claret-and-Cobalt’s unbeaten streak to five games since its last loss, 4-1 to Houston, on Sept. 14, and now guarantees the team a top 4 finish in the West regardless of what happens on “Decision Day.”
Captain and MLS Golden Boot contender, Chicho Arango, remains tied with Álvaro Saborio for the all-time single-season franchise goalscoring record at 17 goals. Arango’s assist last Saturday was his first appearance on the scoresheet since July 6 at Atlanta United.
Midfielders Dominik Marczuk (Poland U21), Zavier Gozo (USA U19), and…