KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Rafael Cabral excelled in RSL’s shootout win over Club America, saving three shots.
- RSL and America drew 2-2 in regulation to earn 1 point each.
- RSL gained an extra point from the shootout.
SANDY — Everything Real Salt Lake goalkeeper Rafael Cabral does just seems to come so naturally.
The 35-year-old Brazilian stopped three of the first four shots in Wednesday’s penalty shootout against Club America, and when asked if he had done something similar before, he simply said, “Yeah.”
“He continues to come up big,” head coach Pablo Mastroeni said of his captain and keeper. “He continues to get the guys to believe and play the way we want to play, and manage the game the right way.”
Thanks to the unique rules of this year’s Leagues Cup, RSL and America each got 1 point for ending the 90 minutes of regulation in a 2-2 draw, and RSL received another point for the shootout win, meaning nobody came away with the full 3 points.
The two teams alternated goals throughout the evening, with Diego Luna opening up the scoring in the 16th minute and America’s Brian Rodriguez equalizing in the 42nd minute on a picture-perfect free kick. A header by William Agada then regained the lead for RSL during first-half stoppage time for a 2-1 halftime lead.
The home team, though seemingly outnumbered by America fans in the stands, appeared primed to run away with the upset win over the No. 2 team in the CONCACAF club rankings, but was unable to secure the third goal to shut the door completely.
America did all it could to leave that door cracked open, and managed to find another equalizer at the buzzer in the final of seven stoppage time minutes. The game moved immediately to a penalty shootout, where RSL made its first three shots and Cabral saved three of the first four America attempts to get the extra point.
“I know we wanted 3 points, but 2 points is going to help us,” Cabral said. “Now we’ve got another two games, and we need 6 points to go ahead.”
The top four teams from MLS in points after three “first phase” matches against Liga MX teams will move on to the Leagues Cup quarterfinals. RSL’s next match is on Saturday against Atletico de San Luis, followed by Queretaro next Wednesday. Both matches begin at 7:30 p.m. MDT at America First Field.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
