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Julian Vazquez was RSL’s 16th homegrown signing when he inked his contract in October of 2018 after featuring for RSL Academy teams. In 2017-18, the 18-year-old Utah native appeared in 29 games while scoring 13 goals for the RSL U-17 team.
Since signing his contract with RSL, he has only seen one appearance for the first team when he came on in the 84th minute in RSL’s 3-0 US Open Cup loss to LAFC on June 11. Regardless of the lack of playing time with the first team, he did make 11 appearances with the Real Monarchs in their 2019 USL Championship title season, totaling 484 minutes overall. He started four of those games and was able to notch one goal and one assist.
Vazquez was also called into the Mexico U-18 camp in November and scored his first goal for the national team.
Obviously, Vazquez is still very young and has plenty of time to work his way up in the club, and will undoubtedly one day have a lot of top-tier minutes under his belt. With an already-crowded attacking corps consisting of players like Sam Johnson, Corey Baird, Jefferson Savarino, Damir Kreilach, and Tate Schmitt, it’s unlikely that Vazquez will see any sort of significant minutes for RSL in the 2020 season.
Fortunately, like we’ve mentioned before, head coach Freddy Juarez has a rich history of working with youth players, so there’s no doubt that he’ll find a way to integrate the younger kids into the lineups when he feels like they’re ready to earn a chance.
We can expect Vazquez to keep making appearances for the Monarchs and building up experience before he has a chance to break through with the first team.