It’s never easy to fill the shoes of a player the caliber of Nick Rimando, but that’s the task of Real Salt Lake goalkeeper Matt VanOekel on Saturday afternoon as RSL faces the New York Red Bulls at Red Bull Arena. While Rimando is away with the U.S. National Team – which throttled Honduras 6-0 on Friday evening in San Jose – VanOekel gets his first start as Salt Lake looks for its first win of the 2017 season.
The 30-year-old NASL and USL veteran is quite different from the player he is filling in for, though.
“There aren’t a lot of similarities, that’s for sure,” quipped RSL Interim Head Coach Daryl Shore in the pregame radio show on Saturday.