SANDY — News broke Saturday morning that Real Salt Lake star Diego Luna will not be selected for the U.S. Men's Olympic Soccer Team.
RSL head coach Pablo Mastroeni said the neglect “fired up the team,” and the 20-year-old showed his team what they had to lose with an outstanding attacking performance in a 5-2 win over Atlanta United (6-10-6) at America First Field.
Luna was aggressive from the kickoff, driving down the right wing and feeding Matt Crooks inside the box for the fifth-fastest goal in club history just 45 seconds into the game.
Atlanta tied the score at 1-1 at halftime, but Bryan Ojeda's second goal of the night and assists from Luna to Chicho Arango and Alex Katranis put RSL up 4-1 in the 78th minute.
Atlanta pulled one back seconds later, but Luna put a beautiful volley off his chest into the net to finally take the lead, 5-2, in the 84th minute.
“There's really nothing I can do about it,” Luna said of the Olympic team decision. “I'm just grateful to be here, to be here with RSL in such great form and to be able to continue doing things like this and hopefully do more of it. So I'm happy and I'm just going to stay focused with RSL and continue to work hard.”
The assist on Luna's hat trick brought his MLS assist total to 12, third-most in the league behind Cincinnati's Luciano Acosta and Miami's Lionel Messi. Arango's goal tied him with Alvaro Saborio for the most goals in a single season with 17, tying him with the RSL club record in 2012, and moved him into the lead in the MLS Golden Boot standings by three goals.
“Diego deserves credit for his effort and performance,” said Mastroeni. “It makes me and the rest of the team very happy that we now have a top-class player ready to play in our next games.”
RSL (12-3-7) has three away games coming up in July against Portland, LAFC and Colorado and will once again be tied with LAFC for the top spot in the Western Conference.
