HERRIMAN — An interesting thing happened Thursday morning after Real Salt Lake's 2-0 loss to Inter Miami CF, when the Herons returned home to south Florida and eight-time Ballon d'Or winner Lionel Messi departed after helping snap Salt Lake's six-match unbeaten streak.
The sun came up, and Salt Lake went back to training and started looking to Sunday's match against the LA Galaxy (5 p.m. MDT, Apple TV).
That's the nature of a 34-game regular season in a 30-team league, even if much of MLS (and American soccer fans) prefer to focus on a single one that wears pink and black on the weekends: there's always another one.
Yes, Real Salt Lake (5-1-2, 16 points) saw its six-match unbeaten streak snapped by a pair of late second-half goals Wednesday night.
But it also revealed something about RSL: For nearly 80 minutes, the small-market club from the Wasatch Mountains went toe-to-toe with Messi, Rodrigo De Paul, Luis Suarez and one of the best teams in the league in Miami (5-1-3, 18 points).
"I think it's another reminder that we can hang with the best teams in this league," RSL midfielder Noel Caliskan said after Friday's training session. "They're the reigning champions, a couple of big players, and I think for 80 minutes, it was a 50-50 game."
There were positive moments to take away from the team's first home loss of the year, too. Real Salt Lake has caught the attention of the league with its fast start, and can still contend for trophies with talisman Diego Luna, rising star Zavier Gozo and goalkeeper Rafael Cabral among its leaders.
The group needs to finish chances, like Sergi Solans did in scoring five goals with an assist in five matches before being shut out against Miami. That, and a little bit of what Caliskan recalled as a German word perhaps inappropriate to print, but essentially refers to a level of kicking butt at all times.
"It's about being relentless … and to not care about the occasion," he said.
"Obviously, it's a big game," Caliskan added. "But I think in order to overcome that, and see it's just another football game."
From the moment the stadium filled up more than an hour before kickoff, the buzz in the stadium was electric — for plenty of fans of both teams.
The first midweek contests across MLS came with a historic visit from Miami, with record-setting home ticket prices and the fourth-largest crowd all-time of 21,512 fans at America First Field.
Many of them wore a Miami pink jersey, or some other short from Messi's storied career included FC Barcelona, Paris St. Germain and the Argentina men's national team. Hundreds of them hung on his every move and cheered each of Miami's two goals as De Paul and Suarez scored in the final stages of the match.
That included a group of fans in RSL's "Founders Suite," the former press box at America First Field that now houses members of the club's ownership group, family and close friends who could be seen erupting in support of the reigning MLS Cup champions.
Perhaps some of Messi's supporters will be back again, the next time wearing the colors of the home team that started 5-1-1 and currently sits a point off third place in the Western Conference.
"It felt like we were, and we are, on the right path," midfielder Stijn Spierings said. "I felt the game was decided by two great goals for them. They were quality goals, and the chances we had, we had to finish them. They finished their chances, and we didn't."
Even the media will return to Real Salt Lake's temporary press box, the cloth-bound structure that sits atop the new steel structure on the north concourse that provided 1,000 extra seats to watch Messi and Co.
They'll be back May 2 against the Portland Timbers, as will Salt Lake players and coaches after Saturday afternoon's road tilt at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California.
"It's only three days until the next game, and hopefully we can move on from that loss quickly with a result at the Galaxy," Caliskan said. "It's a big game for us, against a conference opponent."
