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SANDY — After a brief hiatus from the CONCACAF Champion’s League, Real Salt Lake learned its path through the 2015-16 version of the tournament Monday.
RSL will face El Salvador’s Santa Tecla FC and Guatemala’s CSD Municipal in the Champion’s League group stage, a series of home-and-away matches that begin in August, the regional confederation announced Monday in Miami.
RSL, the No. 3 seeded team from MLS’s Western Conference that finished 2014 with a 15-8-11 record, earned a Champion’s League berth after the L.A. Galaxy and the Seattle Sounders won the MLS Cup and the MLS Supporters’ Shield, respectively, in the 2014 season.
The Salt Lake side makes its first foray into the continental championship since 2013, when it went out in the group stage. The club advanced to the CCL final in 2010-11, when it lost to Monterrey in the home-and-away aggregate series.
Santa Tecla FC qualified by winning the Clausura season title via a penalty shootout, the first first-division championship in the club’s eight-year history. Santa Tecla was founded in 2007, taking over the professional license of Telecom FC, which dissolved after the 2006-07 season when its main sponsor pulled its funding during a financial crisis.
Santa Tecla earned promotion to El Salvador’s top division by winning the 2012 title during the second tier’s Apertura season. The team plays its home games at the 10,000-seat Las Delicias Stadium in Santa Tecla, El Salvador.
Santa Tecla boasts American goalkeeper Derby Carrillo, who played with the NASL’s Atlanta Silverbacks before joining the El Salvadorian club in 2014. A native of La Mirada, California, Carrillo played college soccer at Cal State Dominguez Hills, where he went 13-3-1 in two seasons before transferring to St. John’s and playing sparingly.
Municipal qualified for the tournament after racking up the most points across the 2013 Apertura and 2014 Clausura seasons in Guatemala. The club is 7-6-9 in 22 appearances all-time in the CCL, and has never advanced out of the group stage.
Municipal, which was founded in 1936 under the nickname Los Rojos, is the arch-rival of Comunicaciones, the original club of current RSL defender Elias Vasquez. The 22-year-old center back made 86 appearances, scoring one goal, in three seasons with Comunicaciones.
