Deja Deja Vu

For the third game in a row we ended with the 1-1 draw I predicted.  I still haven't gotten the goal scorer right though.  This time the Rapids looked like the better team, but moral victories are hollow when you're a single goal in goal differential above last place.  It has now been 7 games and 188 days since our last win, an in-season record but obviously the oddity of COVID is largely responsible for that.  Our longest stretch was 249 days from the end of 2014 through the beginning of 2015, Pablo's infamous 18 game winless streak.  Hat-tip to Richard Fleming for both those numbers.

Last night the Rapids dominated the stat sheet,  outshooting the Dynamo 26 to 10 (7-3 on target), having almost 2/3rds of the possession, and winning a majority of the duels.  All it took is 20 seconds of inattentiveness though for Houston to score, and an inability to finish (along with some pretty good saves by Houston's keeper) meant that the only stat that mattered was even.

Lets talk about both goals, starting with the Dynamo.  Coming straight out of halftime the Dynamo went down our left side and then crossed to the far post where Ramirez was waiting to head it home,  Last night I thought Abubakar had gotten sloppy again, but watching the replay today that's probably unfair. While Ramirez does get a step on him, it was really a perfectly placed cross that beat Lalas.   Yarbrough probably should have come out to make a play, but again, the ball was put in the perfect place to handcuff him.  Really the failure was at the point of the cross from Rodriguez who had received a little nothing pass in space between Trusty and Price.  Trusty dropped off with the rest of the back line and Price kind of spun in a circle and waited too long to put pressure on Rodriguez, which let him set up that cross.

The Rapids got there's from an equally good pass though.  After a Colorado corner was cleared in the final minute of stoppage back upfield to Vines who was playing free safety on the kick he dropped a pass over the Dynamo back line right to Abubakar's foot.  Lalas could give some strikers lessons on one-touch control of the ball, bringing it down right where he needed it to nutmeg the keeper and level the score.  He also beat the offside trap perfectly on the pass.  Vines+Lalas, because they're the offense the Rapids deserve, but not the one they need right now.

Man of the Match: Younes Namli.  Kamara had a great early game (he was a combined foot away from a hat-trick in the first 20 minutes) and Lalas got the goal, but Namli was the best player by far.  He's shown flashed of what he can do this season but last night was the first time where he was the best player on the field for either team.  His footwork and ball control are as good as I've seen on the Rapids since Valderrama retired.  He got absolutely crunched on a tackle that many of the fans thought signaled the end of his night (if not worse) but he got right back up and a minute later was breaking Dynamo ankles again.  He had a gorgeous effortless shot that dipped and swerved and just missed going inside the post, one of the best missed shots I've seen in this league.  If he keeps doing that he'll meet the expectations that we put on him when we signed him as a DP.