Sidepass: Wherein We Learn That the Rapids are Less Bad than SKC

This game was so so Wednesday, in every way, shape and form.

It started for me with just getting to the game. Pick up the kids at school, feed them, have them hang on me and haul them semi-willingly to DSGP. And on the way, of course, an accident between a US Postal Service truck and two mini-vans block two of the three northbound lanes caused a 45-minute delay in getting there.

A smooth and well executed transition from one end to the other, utterly confounded by clumsiness and lack of attention.

Yeah, that was a good metaphor for this game.

Both teams played a lot of long ball. Both teams looked sloppy on their first touch, a yard or two off on their best passes, and pretty unwilling to play the ball into the middle of the pitch when the sides, the corners, or deep would be safer.

Among two bad teams playing unattractive soccer, SKC was precipitously worse. First half lowlights include an Ike Opara miscued-pass that nearly turned into a Sam Cronin goal; a slip-and-fall, also Ike Opara, should have given the Rapids a free shot, but was incorrectly ruled a foul; two SKC shots on goal that were a solid 15 feet over the bar ("How hiiiiiiiigh, do you want the goal?..."); and a constant and absolutely bizarre and stupid insistence on unloading the ball long and high to the 5'9" Dom Dwyer, who was man-marked all game by the 6'7" Axel Sjoberg. If the tactical plan from Sporting Kansas City was "take no risks, leave 0-0", then it was almost a success.

TL;DR, here's what whoscored.com's bot figured out from the numbers. "Team has no significant strengths." Pretty spot on.

Take... On... Me... Or if You're Kansas City, Don't

Another thing to notice: The Rapids wingers and fullbacks like to dribble at defenders. I'm a staunch proponent of this aggressive offensive style, and it's something we've seen more of this year. That's a product of Luis Solignac being healthy and in form; Dom Badji having confidence; Mekeil Williams having excellent technical skills and some speed reminiscent of Marvell Wynne, but with a bit more common-sense; and the team adding Marco Pappa and Shkelzen Gashi. This team can put it on grass and come at you.

It wasn't super effective this night: the Rapids had 22 attempted take-ons, completing only 8. Still that's ok, because beating a defender one-on-one on occasion opens up the game in ways that long passing never can- you've got a player, in space, with defenders in panic-react mode. That's good.

On the other hand, SKC was only 4 of 6 on take-on dribbles. When an SKC player had the ball, they opted to pass. When they had the chance to charge, they generally held back. That made them pretty toothless. Here's a great example, and to me, this 15 second sequence sums up SKC's whole game. And this was one of their better attacks.

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In the 35th minute, Jimmy Medranda takes the ball off of Jermaine Jones and feeds it to the middle, where he posts up Dom Dwyer and takes off on a nice run. But Medranda's pass isn't perfect, and Dwyer's first touch is clumsy. Dwyer recovers to knock a gorgeous through-pass out to Brad Davis. But that one extra touch allows the Rapids to go from only having two defenders able to respond, to suddenly having four. The Rapids do a good job responding, but a clean touch by Dwyer and this is an almost certain goal. But still, Davis has a play...

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Davis is not a dribbler; he's known as a pinpoint crosser. And here, maybe he should have dribbled a bit more. Or maybe he needed a better cross, because what he did wasn't even close. Instead, his pass is easily batted away by Bobby Burling.

But! The play's not dead. Roger Espinoza grabs a rebound and dinks a perfect play - ripe for a 1-2 - to Soni Mustivar. Instead of playing it on and through; instead of backheeling or turning into an attack, Mustivar plays a boring and safe pass back to Lawrence Olum. After the gif cuts off, heres what happens: SKC recirculates the ball four or five times all the way back to their defenders on the wrong side of the centerline, goes long to Dom Dwyer 35 yards out, and SKC turn it over to the Rapids midfield. SKC took something: TWO somethings, and made nothing. Rinse. Repeat. For 90 minutes.

With this level of timidity, and this little creativity, the Rapids only needed to be marginally better. And they were.

The Rapids were more aggressive than SKC, and were defensively capable of stopping Sporting's flaccid and ill-conceived attack. It is an important thing to highlight, however, that this won't work against a lot of teams on a lot of nights. If we play like this against the LA Galaxy (an LA Galaxy fronted by Gyasi Zardes, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and Giovani Dos Santos?) , then we will lose 4-0. This was not Supporters Shield-quality soccer. But on a Wednesday against a floundering SKC that was without both Graham Zusi and Benny Feilhaber, it'll get you 3 points.

Quick Hits

Dillon Serna is awesome.

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That's all I have to say about that...

Solignac, Badji, and Jermaine Jones give the Rapids something when they are in the lineup that  Gashi, Powers, Pappa, and Serna don't: size. Those first three are all 6'0", and all ~175 pounds. Gashi is 6'0", but I he's not the rippling specimen that JJ is. Powers is an inch or two shorter; Pappa too; and Serna is only 5'7". The Rapids game plan - which I'm going to call RTD - Rapids Total Defense, mixes tough defending with winning fouls in the other end and beating teams in the box. I think we have at least 3 goals on set pieces, and height and physicality are a big asset there. My take on the ‘Why won't Pablo start Serna?' is that he's too short, and that forces the team to adjust their game plan. That's my guess as to why he's been treated as an impact sub instead of a valued starter. But hey, who knows...

I was braced for a quiet and lonely game with attendance in the low 6,000 range, but to my surprise, there were north of 9 or 10,000 on hand; and although that sounds bad - shooting for DSGP to be 50% full probably isn't the goal of the front office - for our one Wednesday game of the year, that's pretty good. I know that there were a lot of free tickets distributed, but still, things are looking up for the club in terms of popularity. Just wait till the Tim Howard-Jermaine Jones post Copa America afterglow effect takes hold, while the team is still relevant in July, August and September; I might need to get tickets now, because there may not be any left right before the game...

Kudos to the North Terrace C38 fans for doing a great job chanting and bringing the noise, and for being a homophobia-free zone when the opposing GK, Tim Melia, was in front of them. They were even smart enough to start a chant before the kick in order to dissuade fans from chanting it. The South Side C38 should be commended for great drumming and music and energy during the game too. On the other hand, the South Stand C38 contingent also embarrassed me as a fan, embarrassed C38 as a supporters group, and dishonored the entire state of Colorado when they yelled ‘puto' all through the second half. I don't use profanity in my column as wantonly as some other BWave writers (no judgement, it's a personal choice), so I'll do it now for emphasis. That's bullshit. You guys need to knock that shit off. Let the low-class low-brow supporters in other cities do that. It has no place in Commerce City. You can expect me to make mention of it on occasion until this stops. Sorry to moralize, but it's unbelievably wrong. It's socially unacceptable to walk up to a co-worker and yell ‘Faggot' at him. I don't see why it's any different to do so at a public sporting event. I hate to be "that guy", but somebody's got to say it...

Rapids Thug Life Moment

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You know what's thug? Going right at a player on a yellow. If you get a defender on a yellow, then you send your attackers at that guy every time. JJ does it; Opara plays the man and not the ball, and he's done. Boy, Ike Opara got mentioned a lot in this column. And... not in a good way.  He got thugged by being the thug here.