2018 was a year of some big ups and some big downs for both RSL as a club and Joao Plata as a player.
In a season that saw the winger’s minutes fall to the lowest he’s seen since 2015 when he suffered a broken foot and had to sit out the first three months of the season, totaling 1,431 minutes after his return, Plata managed to play in 25 games this year — while starting 20 of them — and logged 1,721 minutes in total. Sure, he was forced to sit due to some more injury issues, but some would say it’s also largely a combination of his underperformance and Sebastian Saucedo’s midseason form that led to Mike Petke’s decision to start Bofo in Plata’s place for several of those games.