MLS’ Real Salt Lake, without owner, manager or star player, have become playoffs’ team of destiny

There have been underdog teams in the 2021 MLS Cup playoffs, and then there is Real Salt Lake. You’d be forgiven if you didn’t predict they’d get this far — please forgive us, Utahans.

To call RSL’s path to the MLS Western Conference final on Saturday a bumpy one would be an understatement. Salt Lake doesn’t have a permanent manager after Freddy Juarez left abruptly in August to accept an assistant job with the Seattle Sounders — a demotion viewed as a step up ought to illustrate the club’s disarray. RSL don’t really have an owner either; Dell Loy Hansen was forced to put the club up for sale last year amid accusations of racism and fostering a toxic culture. MLS later took over the sales process, but no deal has been finalized.

“This last year has felt like five years to me,” interim RSL president John Kimball said after the club passed its one-year mark of being for sale.

The lack of certainty within the organization has trickled down to an on-field product that has looked far from convincing. So unconvincing, in fact, that before the playoffs began FiveThirtyEight projected a long-shot 9% chance for RSL to reach Saturday’s Western Conference final against the Portland Timbers.

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“We’re just shutting a couple mouths up as we go and we’re loving it, man,” RSL goalkeeper David Ochoa said on ESPN’s Futbol Americas podcast. “We’re in a good spot right now. We’re feeling confident. I think we’re going to get another result again on Saturday vs. Portland.”

RSL may be proving the pundits and projection models wrong, but it’s easy to see where all the doubt came from. Salt Lake barely eked its way into the playoffs in the first place, needing a 95th-minute goal from Damir Kreilach on Decision Day just to get the Western Conference’s final playoff spot. Oh, and in that game, the…