By Charles Boehm
As they reflect on the club-record, reported $15 million transfer of homegrown star Zavier Gozo to English Premier League side Crystal Palace, the leadership team at Real Salt Lake quickly points out that one person above all is responsible for the 19-year-old attacker’s rapid ascent.
“Gozo deserves the lion's share of credit for his development,” emphasized RSL sporting director Kurt Schmid in a conversation with MLSsoccer.com.
“One of the things that is kind of impossible for us to do is to instill in these kids the desire to improve and the responsibility in their own development. So from right away, Gozo showed that.
“A very unique individual,” Schmid added of the USMNT hopeful. “There's not more like him just lying around waiting to be scooped up.”
Full-circle story
The West Valley City, Utah native was blessed with a soccer-centric upbringing thanks to his father Alban and older brother Elijah, who both played and love the sport at a high level, as well as what assistant sporting director and former MLS standout Tony Beltran calls “elite physical abilities” that helped him keep pace with older, stronger counterparts at every stage of his climb through the club’s player pathway.
Notably, Gozo earned this lofty price tag on the pitch, not just with upside. Racking up 10g/8a across about a season and a half of first-team action, the Ivorian-American creator was productive and occasionally spectacular with his hometown side.
His trajectory was so steep that he became a late-breaking dark-horse contender for the USMNT's 2026 FIFA World Cup squad, despite zero senior international experience. Afterward, even he admitted to some disappointment at missing out, though he's widely projected to be one of Mauricio Pochettino's newest recruits when the Yanks gather again this autumn.
Still, there are lessons to take from Gozo’s path, perhaps even more so because he was widely viewed as a top prospect from the moment he joined RSL’s youth system, long regarded as one of MLS’s best, in 2021.
“Gozo and I joined the club in the same year, actually, which is crazy,” noted Schmid, “because I remember going to MLS NEXT events with Gozo playing for the U-15s in [Generation adidas] Cup, in the playoffs, whatever it was that year, and now here we are. So it's a really full-pipeline moment where the kid that you've watched at that age comes all the way through and becomes a player that takes the next step to Europe.
“That's what we're trying to do.”
And that's exactly what they've done, as Gozo joins fellow MLS academy alum and USMNT center back Chris Richards (FC Dallas) at the reigning UEFA Conference League champions.
Academy overhaul
Like any adept club with a special talent on their hands, Salt Lake did a lot more than just stay out of Gozo’s way. The local kid joined the Claret-and-Cobalt at a pivotal juncture in RSL’s history, with an ownership change from Dell Loy Hansen to a group led by David Blitzer and Ryan Smith (who’ve since sold controlling interest to Miller Sports & Entertainment) that entailed a lengthy period of limbo.
At the back end of that process, some clear-eyed judgments had to be made about the state of the RSL pipeline – “everything in the academy, from the dorms to coaching to medical to performance to everything scouting/recruitment, especially,” explained Schmid, even with the hundreds of millions of dollars that had already been invested in extensive physical infrastructure like the Zions Bank Training Center.
“There was a period of significant underinvestment for the academy,” Beltran told MLSsoccer.com during RSL’s preseason camp in La Quinta, California earlier this year. “It was very under-resourced. It was understaffed. Corners were cut. Certainly some good players still came through, but the operation wasn't in the place that it should have been, the level that it was previously.
“So when new ownership came in, in 2021, we made a concerted decision and effort to reinvest in the academy and shore up all those areas that really needed attention. The first class that we recruited, developed with those renewed resources, with our structure, with our expectations, all of those things, is the 2007 class.”
Yes, that’s Gozo’s birth year, which made him the de facto standard-bearer for this ‘Play Your Kids’ relaunch. Coaches and staffers at every level were on board with the mission, including and especially first-team boss Pablo Mastroeni, a US international and World Cup standout in his own playing days who became a vital influence.
“What we did right with him, I think, is what you can usually do right with these guys, which is challenge them appropriately to continue to spur their development,” said Schmid. “With Gozo, it was moving him through the pathway at a rate that matched his ability, to raise his level to that of his peers or where he was playing at that time.
“Also, that they're given an opportunity and a platform. So Gozo could be Gozo, but if the club and the coaching staff and everyone isn't aligned on giving players like that an opportunity, then it doesn't matter, right? He'll wither on the vine.”
Committed to development
The 2026 MLS All-Star will always have a special place as one of the club’s first truly local Utah kids to flourish at every level of the RSL pyramid before taking flight from the nest. Yet the club remains committed to casting arguably MLS’s widest net in geographic terms, scouring the western United States for teenage prospects.
The 2022 arrival of Jon Spencer, a respected youth coach and talent spotter who nurtured a litany of future professionals over many years in southern California and is now RSL’s academy director, was a key milestone in that regard. That said, the Claret-and-Cobalt want this mindset to transcend their youth operations. They aspire to be a place where any player of any age can improve, even transform, themselves.
Along those lines, it shouldn’t be too shocking if another Utah native, 22-year-old Zach Booth, a loanee from Dutch side Excelsior, is given an opportunity to win the wingback spot vacated by Gozo rather than RSL venturing out to splash some of those millions on a plug-and-play replacement from elsewhere.
“Our club is thought of as sort of the academy club, maybe,” said Schmid. "But really, I think philosophically, it's more generally player development. The academy is a big part of that, but also whether we grab kids in USL or pull them into the NEXT Pro team or draft them out of college or develop even a 25-year-old into someone that can be a consistent player for us. It doesn't matter where they come from.”
Situated in one of the league’s smallest metropolitan areas in population terms, Salt Lake aim to finish in the Western Conference’s top four in this and most other seasons. They believe punching above their weight hinges on building, rather than buying.
“That's the backbone of our club and something we need to do to survive,” said Schmid. “It's no secret in terms of where we sit in the pantheon of the league. But we know that the best way to be a winning club and to try to consistently compete for trophies is to develop players – players of all ages and all backgrounds.”