Yep, That Was A Rocky Mountain Cup Match

Typical Rocky Mountain Cup match.  We go down two early, one on a PK.  We battle back to tie.  We go down again.  We get a PK.  We miss the PK.  We get a tying goal late.  Tying goal is ruled (correctly) offside.  That's our RMC luck in a nutshell.

There's been lots of talk about the officiating in this one.  I'm by no means an expert but I've spent some time reading refereeing forums.  From my POV, here's how I'm looking at the calls:

• Both PK's were equally soft, and both were for feet getting entangled.  Either you call both or you call neither.
• The offside on the Rapids goal was very close, but accurate
• The VAR discussion right before that was for a possible hand ball in the box.  The ball did hit his hand, but it also hit Mezquida's hand in a much worse way right after that.  I don't think either of them should have been called handling though as neither met the standard
• Glad's red card is the one that I don't feel was handled 100% correctly.  For me it was an orange card and whatever the ref called on the field was probably the right card.  It doesn't seem to me to be "clear and obvious" that either a yellow or a red card is the wrong call on that play.  Glad came in fast and with an extended leg but he did make a successful play on the ball ("getting ball" doesn't forgive a foul but it can factor into the play) and at the last second he angles his foot down slightly to try to lessen the impact.  His leg is also not "locked" as he makes impact.  Again, if you want to call that red i won't argue with you, but I also wouldn't feel a yellow was an unjust result.  The call on the field probably should have stood.

Outside of the officiating problems the big story was Seb Anderson getting beat, over and over.  I understand that Vines was a late scratch and with the season lost getting our kids playing time is the priority, but Anderson is barely up to playing his natural position, much less being swapped to the other side of the field.  If there was any match to rest the kids and go with more known quantities (like Serna), this was it.  The rivalry was the only thing left to play for and now down a goal going to Utah its going to take a 2 goal win to bring the Cup home.

With this loss the Rapids now have the worst start through 11 games in league history at 2 points.  The 2007 FSL team went 11 games without a win to start the season but had 5(?) draws in that time.  Nobody has ever gone the first 12 games without getting a win.  The Rapids also tied their team record losing streak at 8 games.

Man of the Match: Lalas Abubakar.  Yes, with an unlucky bounce and being a bit out of position you could make the case he was responsible for the winning goal, but he also only got here on Wednesday.  Its not surprising he might not have all his defensive assignments down yet.  Despite that he looked really good on Saturday night.  Looking good as a Rapids CB is not a high bar to clear this year but he actually looked like a competent MLS CB.  He got involved in the attack as well.  He was also one of the first (along with the other new guy, Lewis) to pull Acosta away from Glad when that red/yellow card tackle happened, which is a good sign that he wants to be a good teammate despite being here on loan.