Real Salt Lake is in top form as they end the season and prepare for the playoffs. 

• Connor Sanders
• Players for Real Salt Lake practice in June at their training facility in Herriman. The team is ranked near the top of the league heading into a final run of regular-season matches.

With a rare weekend off during the Major League Soccer (MLS) season, one might have expected some of the players training at Real Salt Lake's academy to let their foot off the gas a bit.

On this brilliant June morning, the team was leading the Western Conference in goals and sat comfortably in third place. The laurels were begging to be rested on. But as the players scrimmaged at the foothill of the Oquirrh mountains, it was clear no one was taking the day off.

MLS All-Star and MVP candidate Cristian Arango seemed to pop open all over the field when his team had the ball. Young standout Diego Luna braced himself into a low stance to push an attacking player off the ball and deftly flicked it with his left foot to a teammate. Emeka Eneli, initially viewed as a reserve coming into the season, seemed to be in perpetual motion throughout the scrimmage, chasing down attackers and building up attacks from the back.

At the center of it all stood coach Pablo Mastroeni, a grizzled former U.S. Men's National Soccer Team (USMNT) player who sensed something special about this group, even after their first few preseason matches.

Despite losing key players and remaking his assistant coaching staff in the offseason, Mastroeni's careful orchestrating of the roster has led RSL to the heights of the MLS standings.

"The word I keep coming back to—to have success in any organization or any sports club—you need 'alignment,'" Mastroeni said post-scrimmage. "I feel very good about the collaboration that we have and the understanding that we're always trying to find the best practices."

The desire to do things for the betterment of the club is evident from the heads of the front office to the reserve players, he added.

"And when you get to that place in any business, in any club, and any team, in any family, I think that's where you find success," Mastroeni said.

It's been a while since that idyllic June morning in Herriman. RSL now stands firmly in the playoff race and is going all in on the push to win the MLS Cup this season. But with a final stretch of games ahead before the playoffs begin, the team has work to do before their dream of lifting the cup can become a reality.

Best Offense in the West
The real separator from the team that leads the West in goals this season and the team that limped into the playoffs last year with a negative goal differential is the attack.

Last season, RSL scored a respectable 48 goals. By July 24, they had scored their 50th goal in a 5-2 drubbing of Atlanta United—and still had 12 MLS games to go on the schedule.

First and foremost it's been the return, in full, of Colombian star Cristian "Chicho" Arango. Arango suffered an injury that kept him out of the stretch run and playoffs last season, but came back with an absolute vengeance. He leads the league in goals scored (17, which is also RSL's single season goal-scoring record) and is tied for fifth in assists (11).

Mastroeni decided to name Arango captain after Damir Kreilach left the club as a free agent in the offseason. This pushed Arango to come into the season in great shape and with an added sense of responsibility.

"With [Kreilach's] absence, it only made sense to me that the type of mentality we need carrying this thing forward is a guy like [Arango], where he's a quality player, a great person, but a fantastic leader. And so it kind of picked itself," Mastroeni explained.

Arango is by far the best striker RSL has had since Álvaro Saborío, and is an enormous upgrade from what Rubio Rubin and Daniel Musovski gave the club last season. Knowing that Arango can get a goal no matter what the game state is or how much time is left makes it much easier for the other attacking players—like Luna, Gomez and Matt Crooks—to focus on fulfilling their respective roles.

"When your leader in [Arango], the leader in the locker room, is also the best player on the field, and performing at the level that he is, it inspires the rest of the group and builds confidence," Mastroeni said.

A big upcoming challenge will be replacing the production of fellow Colombian Andrés Gómez, who had a ridiculous 13 goals and 7 assists before reportedly being sold for a club record $11 million to French club Stade Rennais, according to the El Show RSL podcast. Most eyes were on Luna to break out in his second season (and he's been excellent, earning an MLS All-Star appearance), but Gómez absolutely exploded in his sophomore season.

This gets pretty technical, but in the offseason, Mastroeni and his staff decided they needed to commit a third defender back during build-up play to force opponents to narrow their press.

That creates acres of space in the wide areas, where they'd get the ball to Gómez and, time after time this season, he turned the defensive left backs into dust.

The talents of RSL's front four—Arango, Gómez, Luna and Crooks—are very complimentary. Crooks excels at making simple, one- or two-touch passes to put the other players in space. Gómez is a demon in 1-vs-1 situations, Arango is the ultimate poacher and Luna fills in all the spaces with his creative dribbling and dangerous crosses.

Replacing Gómez is a big ask, but RSL sporting director Kurt Schmid immediately reinvested the money from his sale into Portugese No. 10 Diogo Gonçalves to try and do just that. Gonçalves shredded the Danish league last season with FC Copenhagen. He finished in the 85th percentile of carries per 90, according to Football Reference, and just the 11th percentile for passes attempted. Or, in English, Gonçalves prefers dribbling past people to passing. That is what made Gómez so special.

RSL also signed 20-year-old winger Dominik Marczuk, who was voted the Young Player of the Season in Poland last year, as well as 27-year-old Australian winger Lachlan Brook as a depth option.

Losing Gómez definitely hurts, but MLS has established itself as the launching pad for budding South American superstars. This is the cost of doing business, and RSL has been doing a lot of good business lately. The front office sold Mexico youth international Fidel Barajas to Mexico's "Chivas" team for north of $4 million after just 17 appearances—a club record, before Gómez.

• Courtesy Photo
• “I just feel like we’re a team that can actually control games this year, and I saw that in the pre-season.”—Real Salt Lake coach Pablo Mastroeni

Moves on the Margins
An underrated part of MLS roster construction comes down to depth. It's a long season and players will inevitably get injured or suspended. Last season, that's what Mastroeni asked of Emeka Eneli. When the team needed a "stopgap" right back or defensive midfielder, Mastroeni said, they turned to the rookie from Cornell.

"To be honest, we kind of had it penciled in as the same kind of role this year," Mastroeni recalled. "Well, what happened was [Nelson] Palacio went off with the Olympic team and wasn't available to come into preseason. So then we just paired [Eneli] with Braian Ojeda because those are the only two pivots that we had in preseason, and they formed this unbelievable partnership."

Eneli is second on the team in minutes played and tied for first in starts. His breakout has been crucial after deep lying playmaker Pablo Ruiz tore his ACL before the season.

"Whenever a coach has confidence in you, it just raises your performance that extra level because he picks the team," Eneli said. "So, if he's selecting me to be out there day in and day out, he obviously sees something in me, sees what I can bring to the team, and that just boosts my confidence. It makes me want to kind of repay that favor of him."

The other breakout performer has been new addition Greek left back Alexandros Katranis.

Remember that whole discussion earlier about Mastroeni and his staff forcing teams to press narrowly to free up Gómez for 1v1 situations? Well, Katranis is the other beneficiary of this new approach.

Lightning quick and with a nose for goals, Katranis is exactly what RSL has been missing from its fullbacks over the last few years. He is in the 98th percentile among MLS fullbacks in goals per 90 this season and 89th percentile in assists per 90, according to Football Reference (he's wildly outperforming his xG and xA, but c'mon, that's dork talk).

The New Coaching Staff
Much was made about the club and Mastroeni's decision to rework his entire supplementary staff last offseason, but that choice has been an essential part of the team's success, Mastroeni said.

New additions Anthony Pulis and Nate Miller have been well aligned with Mastroeni's vision for each game. Pulis focuses on the team's defensive gameplan while Miller handles the offensive side.

Bringing in these new voices has helped the players to learn more effectively.

"I just feel like we're a team that can actually control games this year, and I saw that in preseason," Mastroeni observed. "Obviously, a game is a game, and there's so many variables that go into winning games, but as far as controlling games and dictating the game on our terms, whether it's with the ball or without the ball, that gives me confidence going to every game that we have a chance to win, regardless of who we're playing."

Mastroeni deserves a lot of credit too. He nailed the decision to stick with Eneli, squeezed every last drop out of Gómez before his departure, and empowered Arango with the freedom and responsibility to carry the team. Getting players from all of these different backgrounds to buy in is, perhaps, the most difficult part of the job.

"[Mastroeni]'s definitely a hard coach, even from day one when I came in, and especially this preseason. I think he was pretty hard on me, but it's helped me grow a lot," Eneli reported. "When a coach gives that much time to me and to the players, it just brings another level out of them. Like, it's not only a relationship on the field, but off the field."

Mastroeni credits the front office for building such a balanced roster.

"I think if you go just with the superstar route, it's going to cost you a lot of money, and a lot of times you don't reap the benefits of longevity with a group because one player's in, the next player's out," Mastroeni said of the roster's balance. "If you go with a bunch of young players, chances are you're not going to have success on Saturdays because we're playing against experienced guys."

What's Next
Despite the electric performance so far in MLS competition, RSL bombed out of the Leagues Cup, a tournament with Mexico's Liga MX and other MLS teams. This could be viewed as some cause for concern, especially given that there's only 12 matches left in the season and some new faces to integrate into the group.

However, RSL sits firmly in 3rd place in the West, and they've got a pretty easy schedule the rest of the way, starting with home matches against bottom feeders San Jose on Aug. 24 and New England on Aug. 31. After those two, there's only four home games left on the schedule before the playoffs begin at the end of October.

This is shaping up to be a nice runway for the new signings to get their legs under them and prepare for a deep playoff run.

While there are still many questions to be answered, one thing is for certain: this RSL group plays hard for each other and likes each other, as was so evident on that June morning in Herriman.

"When you have belief in your teammates and you're good friends with your teammates—you know, nobody dislikes anybody on the team—I think that really can propel a team," Eneli said. "The chemistry we have right now is just fantastic. The way we play, you kind of just know where each other is going to be, what other teammates are going to do."

Before the team headed their separate ways for the long weekend, the players, coaches and other staff gathered for a team barbecue. They teased each other and roared with laughter as they waited for the food.

"I think what we always had from the beginning was the mentality, the intensity and the energy," Eneli added. "Whenever you have that, then you can accomplish anything. When I saw that in preseason, I knew that we had something special. And then once we got the tactical work down and the chemistry together, match that with the intensity, the energy, our mentality, then we really believe, like, 'Oh, this is something special.' We can really accomplish something this year. And so, hopefully, we go on and do that."