Rapids Stuck In 2022 To Start 2023

After repeated talk this offseason from Rapids coaches and players about how the team needed to stop giving up cheap goals on the road, the club kicked off 2023 by giving up multiple cheap goals on the road.  Losing 4-0 on opening day in a game that, with the exception of a few new faces, looked straight out of midseason 2022 doesn't suggest that any of the change we expected this year is coming any time soon.  In the postgame Fraser said all the expected things, taking part of the blame by being too aggressive with the tactics, but the reality is that very few of the players in burgundy last night looked ready for the opening match.  Real questions have to be asked about where this team's mentality is right now.

I'm going to break down all 4 Seattle goals here, because the failures in them really outline the whole game.  On the first when the Seattle attacker receives the ball in midfield the Rapids have the play pretty well locked down.  There's no direct pressure on the ball, but on Colorado's half of the field there are 7 defenders plus Yarbrough against just 4 attackers.  This shouldn't be a threat.  But then Gersbach makes a critical mistake.  He leaves Morris like he's going to put pressure on the ball, but then stops, then starts, then stops.  By the time he decides what he's going to do Morris has broken behind him and received the pass and its off to the races.  Maxsø starts to move over to cover and Gersbach tries to get back but neither get pressure on Morris before the cross.  Meanwhile Abubakar and Rosenberry both start to cover the same man, then Rosenberry backs off to mark empty space.  This allows Christian Roldan a free run from midfield to the 6-yrd box without any pressure where he gets a free header.  Yarbrough makes the initial save but the rebound goes right back to Roldan and he headed it home.

The second goal looked like a copy of the first.  Once again Gersbach was caught up field allowing Seattle to come down our left side.  Once again Maxsø tries to cover but can't get there before the cross.  This time Abubakar manages to head the initial cross away but not far enough.  The ball is crossed back in from the right where Rosenberry has lost Morris who slots it home.  Before he gets his touch though it goes by him and a flailing Yarbrough and bounces off Abubakar right back to Morris.

Third goal?  Gersbach upfield?  Check.  Maxsø tries to cover the empty space behind him Seattle played into? Check.  This time it started with a horrible pass to spave between two Rapids by Rosenberry.  After the cross there was a little more play in the center of the park before the ball popped out to the right side to be crossed back in.  Abubakar got in the way of the cross but could only stop it at the top of the 6-yard box where it became a tap in for Heber.

We finally saw something different on the 4th goal.  This one came off a corner kick where the defensive marking assignments made no sense to me.  The corner came in and a Seattle attacker got a head to it, but sent it directly into the head of another attacker and the rebound off of that player rebounded off of Wilson's head to the far post.  Waiting there was Jordan Morris, being marked by Cole Bassett of all people.  It was an easy header at that point for the fourth and final goal.

As you can see, with the exception of the final goal, pretty much all our problems developed from the wings.  I can't remember the last time I saw both Rapids outside backs (Rosenberry and Gersbach) play that poorly in the same game.  I don't know what they thought they were doing but it wasn't playing soccer.

Random Thoughts:

• Rubio was out due to a knee injury.  Today we found out he had arthroscopic surgery and will be out 2-5 weeks.
• Abubakar shows up in a lot of those goal breakdowns and he didn't have a great game, but I don't think it was as bad as some people are making it out to be.  On the second and third goals while he did get a touch in both cases they were uncontrolled touches while he was trying to clean up the mess.  Bad luck more than bad play, but that does seem to happen to him more often than average.
• Chris Sharpe is going to have to sit down and rethink our corner kick defense, or find out what we did wrong.  There's no world where marking Morris with Bassett alone makes sense, and it didn't look like there was another Rapid who Morris eluded or anything.
• Yarbrough looked awful on the second goal, and average the rest of the time.  Ilic will have a chance to get plying time sooner than later if that keeps up.
• Kevin Cabral started on the bench which was an interesting choice for our big DP acquisition of the offseason.
• He should start on Saturday in place of Barrios, who is clearly being hunted down by Father Time.  Based on last night he should be a super sub only this season.
• Nicholson hasn't improved since last season.
• Maxsø was the best of a bad set of defenders.  Largely he did fine on defense but his long passing was lacking.
• There were really only two players who brought positive play last night.  Connor Ronan looked good in midfield and created a few positive moves.  He faded out at times (as did most of the team) but certainly deserves to start on Saturday based on this match.
• One piece of good news for Saturday is SKC is playing right now in Portland, having had their game delayed 48 hours due to weather.  That will make them a little less rested com Saturday.

Man of the Match: Darren Yapi.  Pressed into a starting role by Rubio's absence Yapi got everyone's attention with a thundering shot off the bar in the first 90- seconds.  His play throughout the game had MLS writers questioning how he wasn't part of the recent U-20 camp and while he's no Rubio, he'll get  absence to show his stuff in March while Diego recovers from his surgery and maybe play his way onto the U-20 World Cup team.