Seattle Sounders 1 Colorado Rapids 0 – Hey Look, A Loss In Seattle, What A Shocker

Oscar Pareja was clearly frustrated by his tactics backfiring in Salt Lake so the Rapids came out with a very different game plan against Seattle. Where they had bunkered against Salt Lake they were going forward early and often against Seattle. Where they had been countering heavily against Salt Lake they were possessing the ball as much as they possibly could against Seattle. It was a very nice display that led to 60/40 possession win at halftime for Colorado.

In the end, both teams only had one shot on goal when the halftime whistle blew. The score was 0-0 and a well deserved 0-0 with both teams playing good, flowing football with turnovers a-plenty.

The second half started with quality for Colorado as well, keeping the possession and putting some more chances toward the net than they had in the first. As Marcelo Balboa said during the Altitude broadcast though, and I'm paraphrasing here, 'In a game with two evenly matched teams in a high pressure environment, it only takes one mistake.'

It was possibly the best game that Colorado had ever played at CenturyLink Field, but a typical result nonetheless. Moral victories ain't enough at this point, Oscar Pareja needs to figure out what is wrong with this offense.

At least there was no controversy of any sort this time around.

MAN OF THE MATCH: Nobody was particularly great in that game – though everyone was approaching good – so I'll go with Brian Mullan, simply for playing a decent game despite having a target on his back. Was also a Baldomero Toledo miscall away from scoring. (And make no mistake, Toledo and his linesman let quite a few plays more offside than that one was go on so he could have easily called that play onside had he been on one of his RSL kicks!)

GOAT OF THE MATCH: Tony Cascio. Bad showing from the rookie, who had several golden opportunities but was left wanting on them all including a wide open shot near the end that smashed the post.