The Daily Wave: Rapids Gotta Mix It Up

Following the game, I put out these two tweets:

Essentially, when we hear about 'attractive, attacking soccer', that's what we're talking about. Both goals had two assists on them, each one also had a string of several passes leading up to easily finished chances. That's the sort of thing that Barcalona does to get their moniker of the most attractive team in the world. (Amazing individual efforts that turn into golazos don't hurt things either.)

However, most (all) of the defenses in MLS are better than Chivas' is. Colorado's players are mostly still young and still working on chemistry since their team changes due to injury seemingly every week. I maintain that we're not going to see the full potential of these guys until next season for those reasons, and that's why they can't just focus on those pretty goals. They should absolutely keep going into games hoping to score said pretty goals, but gameplans change if defenses are having particularly good evening.

Now, what's an 'Ugly goal'? That's when you capitalize on one of the mistakes that even the best defenses make every game. Getting deflections, beating people up to get headers, scoring on set pieces.

Here's the thing, Colorado has yet to put a game together this year featuring both 'pretty goals' and 'ugly goals'. (Penalty kicks aside, since that Portland game comes to mind.) That's the way to win games if you're the Rapids, I think. Focus on trying to get those pretty goals but practice finishing off those ugly chances. That was the biggest issue with last season's team. We saw all sorts of opportunities created by the squad, capitalizing on opposition mistakes, earning free kicks and penalty kicks, and being unable to finish a dang thing.

Even though they're getting those gritty goals now, they're struggling mightily at putting together the pretty ones in the end, even though that's the aim of the team going into most of the games. That should get better as the years go along and the team continues to gel together, but the Rapids are starting to look like a contender immediately with the results they've pulled out lately. If that's going to turn into anything substantial like, dare we say it, a trophy, they'll need to find it sooner rather than later. They've already started playing good soccer. It's up to them to make that good soccer look as good in the end as they did against Chivas all the time.