RSL players, coaches say they’ve blocked out the recent front office drama, earning a playoff spot in the process

Herriman • A lot has been going on for Real Salt Lake in the last several weeks.

Longtime veteran Tony Beltran announced his retirement. Goalkeeper Nick Rimando played his last regular-season home game in an RSL uniform. The organization celebrated its 2009 Major League Soccer title. The team clinched a playoff berth.

And that’s just on the field.

Behind the scenes, there’s been a lot less celebrating and honoring. Instead, there’s been a serious reshuffling of top positions within the club due to several incidents. It started in mid-August with former coach Mike Petke’s firing for cause after a tirade toward officials in July during which he used a Spanish-language homophobic slur toward an official. Petke sued the club over the matter a month later.

Information in the lawsuit also seems to have directly contributed to the departure of general manager Craig Waibel, who is alleged to have criticized RSL owner Dell Loy Hansen and planned to leave the club at the end of the season.

But through it all, the team has endured — even thrived. Real managed to put their collective heads down and come out the other side as a playoff team a week before the official end of the season.

How did they do it? Taking it one day at a time, interim coach Freddy Juarez said Wednesday after training.

“No extra energy wasted on that type of stuff,” Juarez said.

Of course, what’s happened recently isn’t the first time RSL has faced sudden changes. The club fired former coach Jeff Cassar just three games into the 2017 season, paving the way for Petke’s eventual arrival.

Captain Kyle Beckerman, who has played with RSL since 2007, has been through many of those changes. He said the front office drama doesn’t affect the team whatsoever.

“It’s just the way it is,” Beckerman said. “We can’t control anything that the upper management does or what happens there. There’s been numerous things over the years. We just have to keep on and keep steady and keep trying to improve. They don’t really affect us.”

Beckerman did say the team has discussed what’s been going on. But the team can’t use front office turmoil as an excuse for not performing on the field, he said.

“Sure, we talk about it,” Beckerman said. “But we have to get to work every day and we have to win games. No matter what happens in upper management, if we lose a game, they’re not going to say, ‘Well the upper management was a mess and so we’ll give them a free pass because they lost today.’ We don’t get that. We have to just worry about what we can worry about and that’s what we’ve done.”

Defender Nedum Onuoha, on the other hand, has only been with RSL since last September. But he agreed with Beckerman.

“Obviously things have changed behind the scenes, but as I say, it’s behind the scenes for us as well,” Onuoha said. “Our day-to-day hasn’t really changed. We’ve gone in to games the same way we have been previously, so nothing from that side has really been affected.”

RSL has one game remaining on the season — Sunday at the Vancouver Whitecaps. After that, there are playoffs to worry about. That’s what the players and Juarez say they can control.

For Onuoha, RSL’s ability to keep its blinders on through the end of the season has a very straightforward explanation.

“We’re very simple people,” Onuoha said. “We just like to come in to work an kick a football or a soccer ball around. That is literally it.”