Colorado Gets A Point From An Ugly Match

While the weather was better on Saturday night than during the Minnesota game the prior week, the soccer was worse.  Lots of play in the middle third with very little happening at either end.  The teams did have 8 shots on target but very few of them were at all dangerous and both teams seemed to just be going through the motions.  That's not good enough for a Rapids team in a playoff dogfight.  A point really puts the burgundy boys into some required results in this 3-game week.

Random Musings:

• Another game, another early goal.  At some point either Joseph Samelson or I are going to go through and count the number of goals given up in the first and last 5-10 minutes of the first half this year and the number won't be pretty.  Its a sign of a lack of concentration.
• This goal is a really bad look for the Rapids, no way to sugar-coat it.  The sequence starts with the Crew making a stab into the box that Lalas and Wilson successfully defend and Columbus cycles the ball back out to the Rapids right side.  Out there are two Crew players with only Diego Rubio to pressure them.  Abubakar is manned up on a Crew attacker in the box, Acosta is on Zelaravan, and Esteves is keeping an eye on Cucho.  Meanwhile there are another four Rapids, plus Yarbrough, just hanging out in the box, with Zardes just outside of it.  For some reason Rosenberry is over on the left near Esteves.  Diaz releases the ball to Santos, and Santos goes right past Rubio who seems to think he has support behind him.  Lalas's man tried to pull him out of position but he doesn't bite, so Santos whips in a cross.  At this moment there are 9(!!!) Rapids physically in the box, including Will, against 2 Crew attackers.  Despite that the cross gets through the box clean, and Esteves loses Cucho who puts away the tap-in.
• Cucho is a great player, and the Crew got a little lucky in that his awkward touch actually directed the ball down into the turf and then up into the goal, where an "expected" shot directly into the goal might have been saved by Yarbrough, but there's no excuse for 9 players to allow an open shot from one of two attackers.  Bad by Esteves to lose Cucho, but overall bad team play to  leave your striker as the only player available to pressure 2 attackers while 5-6 guys defend space.
• Moving on to the waved-off goal, it was the right call.  The replay in stadium focused on the shot Zardes scored, but the offside was on the entry ball.  Zardes was just offside when that ball was played to him.
• The PK was an easy call for the ref.  And great job by Rubio putting it away even as the Crew keeper guessed correctly.
• After that the game really got stuck in the mud.  It took almost 30 minutes of the second half for either team to get a shot on goal, and both teams looked gassed at that point.
• Fraser played it safe, making like for like subs primarily and not really pushing for the win, which was disappointing to see.
• You never want to see a player go down, but it hurts more when its a young kid who's just getting his feet under him.  No work yet on Yaya Toure's injury, but it didn't look good.  We're all hoping its not as serious as feared.
• Rapids defended a man down after that due to being out of subs, but the Crew never threatened and seemed to be satisfied with the draw, oddly.
• The teams ended up tied on xG at 1.4.  But 0.8 of the Rapids xG came off the PK.  Outside of that the Crew had double the Rapids xG.
• Colorado will be without Acosta and Esteves in Vancouver on Wednesday due to yellow card accumulation, presumably Toure due to his injury, and their equipment manager who got sent off late.
• The Rapids will need a result north of the border too.  Given the upcoming schedule after this week its hard to see how we could make a real playoff push without getting at least 4 points from Vancouver on Wednesday and Houston on Saturday.

Man of the Match: Lalas Abubakar.  Broke up a lot of attacks and didn't give the ball away.  He also avoided the yellow card that would have suspended him alongside Acosta and Esteves on Wednesday.