Max had a great outing. Game kind of flipped after he was subbed on. Great turn and long ball to Zardes to start the tying goal. Plus headed down the corner for Warner’s rebound goal. Lalas had a off night but he will bounce back.
Apparently I missed a wild, wild affair. Damn. Our first road win and I miss it. Can’t wait to watch the replay. Been. While since we’ve put 5 past an opponent. I think that was again LAFC last Oct or Nov.
Oh hey, the Colorado Rapids won a game without a clean sheet.— Matt Pollard (@LWOSMattPollard) August 3, 2022
The game winner - Red Bulls 1-0 RapidsRed Bulls 2-0 RapidsRed Bulls 2-1 RapidsRed Bulls 3-1 RapidsRed Bulls 3-2 RapidsRed Bulls 3-3 RapidsRed Bulls 3-4 RapidsRed Bulls 3-5 RapidsRed Bulls 4-5 RapidsColorado wins a nine-goal thriller.🎥 @MLSpic.twitter.com/XQImhspCZf— The Athletic Soccer (@TheAthleticSCCR) August 3, 2022
A full circle moment for Yaya Toure, a Red Bulls academy product 🤙#Rapids96 pic.twitter.com/oPdCdQlv06— Colorado Rapids (@ColoradoRapids) August 3, 2022
Um, I really thought my phone was malfunctioning this AM. Pinch me. Maybe this is the "Great Awakening"? R p.s. Anyone have a favorite EPL Fantasy Team?
FIVE goals, FIVE different goal scorers...We kept fighting for those points 😤@Toyota | #Rapids96 pic.twitter.com/FYVre9XOng— Colorado Rapids (@ColoradoRapids) August 3, 2022
A day later and I’m still shaking my head. But my last picture is the boys giving up two goals in the final minutes to throw it away. VAR to the rescue. The takeaway is there is no takeaway. The defense is in shambles. The substitutes gave us life against an incredibly fatigued team. Those are games that you need to win and move on.
Kudos for the players sticking with the game and getting the W. However, we still played really poorly and this win had more to do with New York being completely gassed and throwing the game away over us playing particularity well. Fraser absolutely needs to stop this 3 CB crap. Its pretty clear that more defenders in this system does not mean better defense. Out starting 11 had 5 defenders and a DM on the field, and we conceded 3 goals in under 30 minutes. Thats appalling. We play significantly better when we have a 4-man back line. The knock-on effect of that also means we have more players up field and we can transition better rather than leaving guys on an island. Seriously Robin, stop it. Barrios also needs to be starting. Sure, he may not be a full 90 player anymore and his speed and agility works well on tired players, but we're shooting ourselves in the foot when we keep putting ourselves in situations where we're down a goal, the attack is anemic, and we have to bring him in every time because all we seem to do without him is hoof-ball.
We are better with 4 in the back than 5, but lets not use our defensive performance in this one as a strong point against 5. We only gave up 3 goals because of the absolute atrocious play by Abubakar. Two of those 3 goals came out of nothing until Lalas turned the ball over deep. On the first a simple play out of the back became a direct pass to an RBNY attacker, and on the third there was no threat until he tried to play a soft square ball to Rosenberry and completely mishit it. A competent defensive player and we're probably only giving up 1 goal in that first 30 minutes (and maybe not even that, since the second goal was scored by the man Lalas was supposed to be marking on the free kick). An interesting note, not counting the penalty kicks, RBNY only had two shots on goal after the 10th minute. That said, we're still much better with a 4-man backline than a 5-man.
Sure, individual errors led to the goals...but you'd think one of the 4 other defenders or the DM would be able to help cover screw ups. It doesn't excuse Lalas having a horrid game, but I expect more when he have more than half our field players dedicated to a defensive formation.
Watching the match, both RBNY's first and third (pk) goals would have been really challenging for other defender to help with given the timing and location of each. There is a point at which any individual player has to make a smart and timely play on the ball with some pressure on them without a lot of cover. Both of those goals were really big screw ups by Abubakar, but unlike previous matches the Rapids were able to get themselves back into the match.
Like everyone else who watched the match, I'm at a loss for words to describe it. How many deflected goals were there? And once again VAR was involved. Fortunately, for this match the Rapids showed the resiliency they had last season. It was really frustrating to watch the Rapids once again hurt themselves by gifting a couple goals (1st & 3rd). At the same time the Rapids were able to just take advantage of their two first half shots to produce goals. And of course this set them up to make a game of it. One factor that really helped the Rapids was the friendly played by RBNY on Saturday night v Barcelona. The Rapids had to agree to move the match to Tuesday and in the second half the combination of heat, humidity and fatigued Red Bulls the Rapids pounced.