Thursday, June 25, 2009

Witness the Power of this Fully Armed and Operational Dallas Team!

Admiral Ackbar was right (as usual), this was a trap game and the Rapids walked right into it. I'm not going to spend much time recapping the game. The Rapids played lousy, Dallas played worse, and both teams had one defensive breakdown that lead to a goal.

In the first half the Rapids controlled the game. Then Ihemelu his a weak pass forward to nobody that Dallas immediately turned around and pushed forward on. Ihemelu compounded his mistake by not holding the offside line (but Ballouchy also did it), allowing Cooper to chip the ball to a wide open Ferreira behind the defense and he popped it over an on-rushing Pickens for an undeserved 1-0 lead.

Colorado looked like they were going to suffer their first loss at home until Cummings decided to continue this great run he's on. Ballouchy, making up for his earlier poor play, sent a nice through ball into the Dallas box in the 85th minute. Cummings split two defenders to get to it and went far post past the Dallas keeper to level the game.

My key to the game was not to overlook the game. Oops. The Rapids played like they could just show up and win against a Dallas team that is starting to find itself, and Dallas took advantage. This was a game that we should have won but by our play at times we were lucky to get a draw.

Other Observations:
  • OK I picked the lineup, the Rapids score, and the Rapids scorer correctly. I just didn't foresee Dallas scoring.
  • The first sub was pulled straight from Clavijo's coaching playbook. LaBrocca was our best player up to that point, why pull him out?
  • Ballouchy regressed last night. Poor game from him.
  • Colin had some nice runs last night, but couldn't get shots on target.
  • In fact most of the Rapids had a hard time knowing where the goal was. Omar had 2-3 great heading chances that went off-target.
  • Pablo was pushing up for the second straight game, interesting to see this new addition to our midfield.
  • Ihemelu's one brain fart per game appears to be back. Let's hope its a one time thing.
Player of the Game: Nick LaBrocca. Credit to Omar for getting the goal, but LaBrocca was the only player out there that played every minute he was on the field.

No comments: