Real Salt Lake reserves to host Mexican squad

SANDY — When Major League Soccer did away with the Reserve Division several years ago, teams were forced to be creative to find competitive games for younger players who rarely ever saw action with the first team.

For Real Salt Lake, that's usually resulted in scrimmaging against BYU and the Ogden Outlaws. Today, it has a new opponent for the youngsters.

RSL's reserves host the Under-21 Mexican National Team at Rio Tinto Stadium Saturday at 4 p.m. All tickets for the match are $15.

With the players who logged major minutes in Thursday's win over Houston unavailable, Real Salt Lake's lineup will be a mix of younger players, a few veterans and a couple of guest players.

RSL's starting lineup will likely include Kyle Reynish, Tony Beltran, Chris Schuler, Rauwshan McKenzie, Jean Alexandre, Ned Grabavoy, Nelson Gonzalez, Collen Warner, Luis Gil and Pablo Campos.

The match will be the third in Utah this week for the Mexican youth team.

On Wednesday, it battled BYU's PDL team to a 2-2 draw in Provo after falling behind 2-0. On Friday, the Mexican team played Weber State at Ogden High School.

e-mail: jedward@desnews.com