19-year-old Diego Luna is continuous to search out his method with Actual Salt Lake in the course of the 2023 MLS season and though Pablo Mastroeni has loads of veteran attackers to name on to steer his assault, it was Luna who paved the best way to 3 factors on Saturday evening.
Luna turned the youngest RSL play to register a multi-goal efficiency as RSL claimed a 3-1 residence victory over the New York Pink Bulls at Rio Tinto Stadium. The 19-year-old winger scored twice for RSL earlier than Jefferson Savarino’s late objective served as insurance coverage in RSL’s tenth league win of the season.
Luna served as one of many U.S. Beneath-20 males’s nationwide staff’s key performers this spring as Mikey Varas’ squad reached the quarterfinals for a fourth-straight event. Now as Luna continues his 2023 schedule with a surging RSL squad, the younger attacker and his head coach credited his U-20 World Cup involvement for serving to him enhance at membership degree.
“I feel it was lots of confidence and lots of stuff going via my head that was clogging me up,” Luna stated postgame to reporters. “What reveals is after I’m free and I’m having enjoyable enjoying, it reveals who I actually am, so I feel that was one thing after I got here again. I felt free and open to the sport and relaxed and capable of play.”
“I feel the hardship that Luna went via, after which with a very good U-20, put him able to dig in a bit bit deeper,” stated Mastroeni. “He will get performed excessive, and he makes a sort out contained in the six-yard field. We will discuss all of the attacking stuff, he’s a really proficient attacker, however if you decide to that form of work, now you develop into part of the staff.”
Luna needed to watch for his alternative with RSL, that includes with Actual Monarchs in MLS NEXT Professional and El Paso Locomotive within the USL Championship earlier than having fun with a bigger first staff position this season. After 13 MLS appearances in 2022, Luna has already tied that mark in 2023, whereas additionally including three targets and one help in seven begins.
His cleverness and final-third consciousness had been on show on Saturday because the homegrown attacker scored twice inside the Pink Bulls field, on two totally different offensive eventualities. Luna’s goalscoring and playmaking talents will solely proceed to develop as the present season rolls on, whereas RSL has Cristian Arango, Damir Kreilach, Danny Musovski, and Savarino to additionally carry the load.
“His progress has been improbable,” Mastroeni stated about Luna’s progress from 2021 to now. “The expectations aren’t that he’s going to attain each sport, however that he’s going to do the work that the staff requires in an effort to get success.”
“I feel the ceiling is excessive for Luna,” Mastroeni added. “I feel he can obtain some nice issues. He’s received lots of instruments that you would be able to’t educate. They’re innate, like the best way his mind works about soccer, the passes that he makes, the best way he sees the sport. He’s received an important perspective on what this sport’s all about, and he’s exhibiting it daily in coaching.”
Luna is one in all a number of younger attacking abilities that might have a future with the USMNT if he continues on his present developmental path. A number of of Luna’s USMNT U-20 teammates reminiscent of Paxten Aaronson, Jalen Neal, and Cade Cowell have all made their senior debuts in current months, and stay on the radar with Gregg Berhalter returning as head coach.
He may need to attend for his alternative, similar to he did with Actual Salt Lake, however Mastroeni believes Luna can develop into a senior nationwide staff participant on this present pool of gamers.
“He’s received an important shot,” stated Mastroeni about Luna’s USMNT potential. “I feel him being part of this group, and the shape that we’re at the moment in, places him in an important place to enter a January camp, and present Gregg [Berhalter] that he’s greater than able to enjoying at that degree.”