Things Were More Than A Little Loony Saturday Night

I thought a draw was likely on Saturday night, and that's what we got.  That said, I did not see a wild 3-3 game coming and we absolutely stole that point.  Many Rapids fans have pointed to our dominance of the game to suggest it was Minnesota who should feel lucky with the draw, and they probably do, but most teams don't get a point out of a game where they trail by 2 at the half, miss a PK that would have tied it, and let the opposition have a look at an empty goal for the winner.  We should take that point and run because we did not deserve it.

For this writeup I want to focus on all 6 goals.  We'll take them in order:

Goal 1 for Minnesota:  This was a nice bit of splitting the lines by the Loons.  Lod makes a sweet little backheel touch that puts him past Larraz and inside of Vines.  At this point there are 5 guys running at Steffen; Roenberry - Jeong - Bombito - Oluwaseyi - Maxso.  You can see Bombito feel like he's stuck in no-man's land and not sure if he should take Jeong or Oluwaseyi as both of them are inside the toehr defenders (and Rosemberry is beat).   Lod send a great pass throug the line to Jeong and Bombito can't catch up in time to deny the shot though he does force it to be more difficult.  Jeong puts it just past Steffen's right leg inside the far post.  A good counterattack by United.

Goal 1 for Colorado: St. Clair sends a goal kick deep that Navarro is able to head forward from the midfield stripe.  Before Navarro even wins the ball Cabral is sprinting from the center circle towards goal.  Fernandez beats his defender to the headed ball and is able to head it into Cabral's path.  At that point its a one on one break with the keeper and Cabral chips him before St. Clari takes him out.  I'm guessing penalty and maybe a red card if Cabral's shot doesn't go in but it does and Kevin Cabral (Kevin Cabral!) levels the score.

Goal 2 for Minnesota: Everyone just got lazy on this goal.  Bombito clears it up to midfeilder where Djordje doesn't really challenge for the header, then Fernandez gets beat to the next ball.  It ends up going out wide to our right where nobody is at, Rosemberry is all the way in the center.  Steffen manages to get a hand on the long shot and parry it but it falls right to an unmarked Oluwaseyi  while Vines is ball-watching.  Easy finish.

Goal 3 for Minnesota: Bombito brings the ball across the midfield stripe and forces an ill-advised pass to Mihailovic who doesn't really have room to receive it.  At this point Rosemberry is slightly ahead on the right of where Bombito makes the pass and Vines is all the way up even with the front line.  Sure enough a Minnesota defender reaches in front of Djordje and pushes the ball up to Oluwaseyi who turns and hits a through ball right past where Larraz was.  Unfortunately Larraz made a stretch to cut off the pass to Jeong but that's not the pass that was made.  Jeong was already past Rosemberry and Larraz took himself out of the play.  That left Bombito and Maxso scrambling to cover that side of the field and they couldn't get there in time.  Once again Bombito got close enough to make the shot harder, but Steffen got beat by a very well hit curler near post (watching it live from above the near post my first thought was "oh good, he missed it" only to watch it curl inside the post).

Minnesota didn't have many chances on Saturday, but they were very, very good on capitalizing on our mistakes and hitting us on the counter.  Bombito learned a bit of a lesson that his speed won't always save him.  Unfortunately I don't know that Rosenberry and Vines learned any lessons about not getting caught upfield...

Goal 2 for Colorado: Another set-piece goal from the mind of Chris Sharpe.  Mihailovic corner right to a spot Navarro ran to, he directed it far post, and it went off the post and in.  If he hadn't gotten it on target Bombito and Maxso were both in position to tap it in themselves (originally the goal was credited to Bombito as he just missed getting his foot on it as it went in).

Goal 3 for Colorado: Bombito swings the ball out wide to Bassett, who's given far too much time and space.  Cole's able to look up and swing a long cross in and Kevin Cabral (Kevin Cabral!) gets his head to it.  St. Clair easily gets in front of it but somehow his punch down doesn't make good contact and the ball had enough velocity to hit the ground and bounce past him into the net.  Even if it hadn't gone in Navarro was charging in to clean up the loose ball.

With the draw the Rapids now have more goals than last season, more points coming from a losing position than last season, and are only 5 points off of last season's total and there's still one more game in May!

Man of the Match:  Kevin Cabral.  Come on, how could it be anyone else.  Arguably Cole Bassett had the best overall game but you score twice, especially your first ever goals at the Dick, you're Man of the Match.