Andy Williams won’t be with Real Salt Lake today for its road game against the Columbus Crew, but thanks to Williams’ longest RSL teammate, the only player to have been with the club for all of its existence will be represented.

Clint Mathis, who was an RSL original with Williams in 2005 but left after that season and returned in 2008, has received permission to wear Williams’ No. 77 in tonight’s game and for as long as Williams is away from the team.

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The following is a letter from former RSL defender Ian Joy, who recently left the team to return to Europe. Joy entered his second season with RSL this year, but was injured not only most of this season but last season as well.

Don’t expect the Sweden Department of Tourism to hire Pablo Campos as its spokesman any time soon.

The newest member of Real Salt Lake practiced with the club for the first time on Thursday morning at Rio Tinto Stadium, and following the training session Campos spent a few minutes with the media. During the interview a reporter asked Campos about his brief stint in Sweden before joining the San Jose Earthquakes at the beginning of this season.

Campos, who was traded to RSL on Wednesday, did not look back fondly on his time in Sweden.

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The hometown fans will have a pair of their players to cheer for.

An MLS league source confirmed that RSL midfielders Javier Morales and Kyle Beckerman will be two of the seven players added to the MLS All-Star team that will face Everton FC on July 29 at Rio Tinto Stadium in Sandy. Houston Dynamo head coach Dominic Kinnear, who will coach the MLS side, will choose five players to go along with the First XI named on Monday, while MLS commissioner Don Garber will make two additions. It has not been confirmed whether Morales and Beckerman will be added by Kinnear or Garber.

Cuauhtémoc Blanco, who was the 2008 All-Star Game MVP, will replace Toronto FC midfielder Dwayne De Rosario in this year’s All-Star First XI.

The league announced that since De Rosario and Toronto FC have a CONCACAF Champions League game the same day as the All-Star game, Blanco, as the player who received the next-highest voting percentage in the midfield, will fill the vacancy.

The starting XI for the MLS All-Star game was announced this afternoon and there was not a Real Salt Lake player on the list.

Online fan balloting made up 25 percent of the vote, with MLS coaches and general managers (25 percent), media (25 percent) and players (25 percent) accounting for the rest of the vote.

Columbus’ Guilermo Barros Schelotto led all players in the combined voting, followed by Los Angeles’ Landon Donovan and Colorado’s Conor Casey.

Here’s the list of the Starting XI:

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It wasn’t a league win, but Real Salt Lake’s 1-0 win over Mexico’s Club America in Saturday’s XanGo Cup was a definite confidence boaster.

Javier Morales scored in the 54th minute and RSL gave the majority of the 17,212 fans in attendance cheering for Club America a different perspective on American soccer.

“Very, very pleased. It was a nice collective effort,” said RSL head coach Jason Kreis. “We started the match off well and we finished it well. We threw out a couple things for the guys to think about going into the second half of the season and I felt like they did a real good job in all the areas that we threw at them.”

Read more on the game here.

RSL has given defender Ian Joy permission to explore opportunities to play in Europe in order to be closer to his family. Joy, who was born in San Diego but grew up in Scotland where his family currently lives, has been injured for most of this season.

More news from RSL.

MLS and Randers FC were unable to come to an agreement so RSL forward Yura Movsisyan will remain with the team until the end of the season and will join Randers in January.