Rapids Fall And Can't Get Up

Last night the soccer gods turned away from the Rapids. I'd say they were too busy with golden boy Tebow, but he might have had a worse day than the Rapids. As a Seahawks fan I feel no sympathy. :D A combination of a lack of offense and bad luck really destroyed Colorado's hopes of repeating.

The home side controlled play for most of the first half, but as we've seen in recent games, they could not convert that into goals. Meanwhile they picked up 3 significant injuries in the first half. The combination of those two things killed them. In the first 15 minutes of the second half KC took advantage of the weakened lineup for two goals and a red card and the game was over.

I'm going to dispense with my normal game review, because there's really only a couple of points to make. This loss is directly attributable to the injuries suffered. Folan left after 23 minutes due to landing badly and tweaking his knee. He's now out 2 weeks. Kimura left after 36 minutes due to breaking his left foot, he's out 4-8 weeks. Moor left after 60 minutes due to spraining his shoulder, he's out 2-4 weeks. We used all 3 subs in the first 60 minutes for players who were injured and will miss the return leg in KC. To their credit, all 3 players tried to play through their injuries before finally having to be subbed out.

Kimura's injury was the killer, and Moor's didn't help. Because of Koz having to leave Marshall was brought in to play center back and Wynne was pushed into Kimura's right back role. Marshall let Bunbury get behind him and couldn't quite catch up, allowing Teal to beat Pickens for the first goal. It was close enough that I have no doubt Wynne could have caught him if he was still playing center back. 10 minutes later Marshall again allowed Bunbury to slip behind him in the box and when closing him down tapped him and gave him the opportunity to go to ground, drawing a PK and a red card for Marshall. Marshall was also trying to cover for the injured Moor, who came out of the game at that point. Down 2 goals, a man, and out of subs the Rapids were done.

That leads me to the second point. Toledo had a bad night in the center, but it wasn't the travesty of justice a number of Rapids fans are making it out to be. The big misses by Toledo was the lack of a foul and yellow card on the collision that injured Kimura and the lack of any cards on the scuffle in the box between Kamara, Pickens, and Comminges. Other than that he really didn't miss that much. Unless Kamara's swipe rose tot he level of a red card (I haven't seen a replay, but it doesn't seem like it) at best a couple of KC players have additional yellow cards. What killed us were the injuries that resulted from the physical, but not dirty, play by KC and our continued lack of creativity on offense. Toldeo didn't cost us this game.

Player of the Game: Miguel Comminges. After a couple of game to settle in Comminges is looking like a solid pick-up. Last night he controlled the left side of defense and even made a couple of good attacking passes. In a game that went sideways due to injuries it was hard for anyone to stand out but I thought he had a good game.