Colorado Rapids vs. Vancouver Whitecaps – Jose Mari Was Your Man Of The Match

Incredibly efficient, smart at going forward and contributing to the offense in short spurts and seemingly always in position to help the defense out the rest of the time. That's exactly what you want from your pivot man, and he was great with the ball all game. This was reminiscent of a classic Pablo Mastroeni performance at his best, but with two goals piled on top. Even without the goals, he would probably be my choice for MotM simply because of the rest of his game.

Six lost possessions is absolutely fantastic for a midfielder that played the entire match. To give you an idea of how good that is, Nick Labrocca was on for only a short while in the second half, was only involved in 30 plays, and lost the ball seven times. Six lost possessions would be a good number for someone like a center back who only touches the ball 50 times in a game. Mari was involved in over twice that many plays.

Add to that the fact that Mari completed 95% of his passes and threw in a tidy 11 defensive plays to help out a somewhat shaky back line, you can probably easily say that Mari alone is responsible for the fact that Colorado was the better team on the ground for the majority of the game and, I think, the clear man of the match.

…One more time for good measure: