'We're going to win': Eagle Mountain's Zavier Gozo driving RSL forward with youthful fire

HERRIMAN — Real Salt Lake forward Zavier Gozo, 18, graduated from the club's academy high school on May 22.

As the Eagle Mountain native moved his tassel across his cap to signify a new era, he couldn't help but let out a little extra emotion.

"He looks like he's celebrating a goal," Herriman Mayor Lorin Palmer reached over and said to RSL academy director Tony Beltran.

Two days later, Gozo was celebrating a goal for real — his first ever in Major League Soccer.

It was a whirlwind weekend for the recent graduate, to say the least. After a year of juggling the duties of an MLS contract and high school, the newly minted adult can officially dedicate his complete attention to his brightly burgeoning pro soccer career.

"It's just kind of my life," Gozo said when asked about his graduation and first goal within 48 hours of each other. "But, yeah, now that I think about it, it's really cool, and I feel extremely grateful to be living the life I live."

So, how does one get to live this life? What makes Gozo different from the thousands of other high school graduates and soccer hopefuls looking for their big break?

Beltran and director of academy administration Colton Atkin highlighted two things: competitive fire and zero entitlement.

"He's complete fire," Beltran, a former RSL man himself, said. "He has this competitive fire within him that drives him, and that was there when he was 12 or 13 years old."

Beltran and Atkin first got a look at Gozo when he played with the club's youth pre-academy program called the Foundation. His play began to generate some hype within the program, and he became the academy's first signing in the 2007-born class.

He quickly took the academy's U15 team to the MLS NEXT Cup final and won the Golden Boot award for the most goals scored at the tournament. He signed his first professional contract at 15 years old with the Real Monarchs in December 2022, and made his MLS debut less than a year later at the age of 16 against the LA Galaxy in October 2023.

A return to the Monarchs in 2024 after his rapid ascent may have damaged the ego of many footballers, but Gozo took it in stride.

"There was never a complaint or, 'why am I here?'" Atkin said of Gozo's 2024 season. "He was pushing to get first-team minutes even at that time, but he was completely fine and actually happy to be at academy events, and he took it upon himself to be a leader."

Beltran recounted a story from a day last year when Gozo was practicing with both RSL and the Monarchs and he had to catch a bus with the academy team to go to a tournament.

"He looks up and he goes, 'All right boys, we're going to win,'" Beltran said. "He's setting the tone and the expectation for everyone else, but also for himself, which is as high as possible."

Beltran said Gozo has "punched through every ceiling" so far in his career and expects nothing but the same going forward. He has started the last six matches for RSL and is the only teenager on the roster to earn minutes this season.

His dedication to "do the dirty work," as Atkin put it, has endeared him to RSL head coach Pablo Mastroeni, who expects complete effort on both sides of the ball all 90 minutes of each match.

"I think it's a long time coming," Mastroeni said of Gozo's first MLS goal. "He's been in really good spots and I think it's moments like that that really accelerate your belief and accelerate your career."

As if Gozo's career needed any more acceleration, the youthful fireball figures to lead the RSL attack for the foreseeable future, alongside fellow rising star Diego Luna. The Claret and Cobalt travel this week to Austin, Texas, on Wednesday and Los Angeles on Saturday to take on Austin FC and the LA Galaxy before a two-week break.

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