Same As It Ever Was

The Rapids, once again, played their worst game of the season in Sandy as the evil empire blew the doors off the burgundy boys en route to a 3-0 win.  Really the scoreline flatters FSL as the wounds were largely self-inflected, at least up to the point where it didn't matter.  That starts with one of the worst own goals in Rapids history as a simple pass from Abubakar back to Yarbrough was misplayed by the keeper and rolled into the goal.  Will just took his eyes off of it and let it get under his feet.  Inexcusable.  

That was followed by a not great turnover by Shinyashiki in the attacking third that turned into a fast break down the field for FSL.  Rosenberry, inexplicably, kept ceding ground to bobby Wood, from the mdifield strip to the midpoint of the box before he tried to make a play.  By that point Wood had created separation enough that Rosenberry couldn't block the shot.  Keegan did, correctly, push him to the outside but then Yarbrough committed another cardinal sin for a keeper and got beat near post.  As a keeper, especially with a defender pushing the attacker outside, you have to make the attacker beat you with the hard shot to the far post, not the easy one near post.

After half the Rapids tried to rally to get back into it, but after an initial burst in the first 15 minutes, capped off by a good clearance off the line of a Abubakar header by a FSL defender, but after that it was fairly clear how this game was going to end.  FSL get one more after Rubin found space between Abubakar and Trusty with neither closing him down, an easy pass put him in on goal and there was nothing Yarbrough could do.

This was a bad week for Colorado.  Coming into it 7 points was a reasonable goal and 9 points was not our of the question.  Instead we got 4 points and played maybe 15 minutes of good soccer in 270 minutes of game time (the 15 minutes after half in the Dallas game).  This stretch really shows how important Vines and particularly Acosta are to this team.  Without Kellyn dictating play in the middle there's nothing to stop teams from running right at our back line.  Bobby Wood's goal was the 3rd or 4th long run he took at the defense with the ball to get into a dangerous spot.  Acosta's played lights out for the Nats at the Gold Cup, which will probably get him the European deal he's been looking for.  We just have to hope that its this winter and not in August, because without him we're sunk for 2021.

Yarbrough had the worst performance by a Rapids keeper since probably the infamous Joe Nasco game.  In 16 minutes he essentially gave FSL a 2 goal lead.  This comes on the heels of a shaky effort against Dallas.  Its not time to make a change. but he's lost any "lead" he had over Irwin for the #1 spot.  Another bad game in the next few matches and it would be good to see what Irwin could do.

Yarbrough's own goal really shook this team, and they never got their heads back in the game.  This was something that was foreseen (by me, among others) in the preseason as a weakness in this squad.  So much youth is great but the lack of veteran leadership makes it hard to get out of a bad spiral when the team gets into one, especially when its one of the senior leaders that made the mistake.

All we can do now is put it behind us and move forward.  Its important that the team bounces back from the poor performance and heads down to Austin with something to prove.  This will be the last match without Acosta and Lewis, but I expect Vines' transfer to be announced as soon as the Gold Cup is over.  Luckily most of the teams around us in the standings also dropped points so the loss didn't hurt us too much, outside of the Rocky Mountain Cup.

Man of the Match: Ollie Larraz.  Given how poorly the team played, his 4 minutes (plus stoppage) of play showed at least a spark that the team was missing.