The Colorado Rapids have found solace in their road form this season, but their most recent performance wasn’t good enough to disrupt the fortress that the Citrus Bowl has become. With their 2-0 victory over the Rapids on Wednesday night, Orlando City stretched their undefeated home streak to six games.
“First of all, the result was crap. As we’ve done all season, we put ourselves in positions to go ahead and we just couldn’t finish,” Rapids head coach Pablo Mastroeni said following the loss. “I think we were disjointed for the first time this year. At the end of the day we were unorganized and in the end we lost like individuals out there and that, for me, is hard to swallow.”
Like many games prior this season, it was the Rapids who had perhaps the best early chance to put their noses in front when Luis Solignac went one-on-one with Tally Hall in the 6th minute. Hall kept the score level, coming off his line to make the save.
“Those are game changers,” Mastroeni said of the moment. “If we’re up 1-0, we can start to dig in a little bit and come away with a better result.”
The Rapids did well to contain Kaká and the Orlando offense in the first half, despite the insertion of rookie Joseph Greenspan at the unfamiliar position of right back in his first MLS start. Shane O’Neill, who has seen limited action in MLS this season, also appeared in his third start of 2015.
“In the first half, we were pretty solid,” said O’Neill. “In the second half, we took wave after wave of pressure and couldn’t seem to get out.”
Wave after wave eventually caused the dam to break, and that’s when the goals came with Cyle Larin opening the scoring in the 62nd minute and Kaká doubling the lead three minutes later.
“Kaká was the cog, creating everything. He made life difficult for us,” O’Neill explained. “That’s the thing. It’s not as though you’re going against a lower league side. They have really some really quality players.”
Mastroeni accredited the defensive changes to Colorado’s current stretch of four games in 11 days and three road games in the next seven. But in the end, the Rapids’ boss said defense was not the team’s biggest issue.
“It wasn’t our defending. It was our inability to connect passes when we had the ball,” Mastroeni said. “We found ourselves chasing. Against a team like this, you’ve got to move the ball quick. You’ve got to be sharper than we were.”
Colorado will have a lot of self-reflection with little time to do it before another road test Saturday in Kansas City.
“We were soft today in the fight. It felt like we were just waiting to get slugged,” Mastroeni lamented. “A lot of self-evaluation has to be made starting with me as a coach and all the way down to the players. I don’t know if there’s anyone hurting more than myself but I believe that we’ll try to turn this thing around.”
