The Millennial Quest Continues: Rapids 1-1 Fire

By: Tom | April 15th, 2007

The Fire haven’t beaten the Rapids in Colorado this millennium, and if they continue to play the way they did today, it’s unlikely they’ll do so before the year 3000 A.D. rolls around.

The Fire head home from the 1-1 draw after an embarrassing performance given they were a man up for the final 84 minutes of the game, following Roberto Brown’s deserved early dismissal for an ugly two-footed late lunge at C.J. Brown.

Time and space are the key elements to any game of soccer and the Fire failed to move the ball rapidly enough to make their numerical advantage pay and stretch the ten-men of the Rapids around the unusually spacious field at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park. Much of the first half was wasted by the back three stroking the ball horizontally amongst themselves and the available space on the wings was either ignored or bypassed by poor distribution.
Rapids Chilling

The Rapids packed men behind the ball, and a miserable one shot on target in the first half was hardly improved on after the break. There was little creativity from either team: neither Terry Cooke of the Rapids nor Justin Mapp of the Fire, each much touted before the game, proved able to establish themselves as the minutes dripped by.

The Fire fell behind to a suckerpunch counter-attack when the impressive Herculez Gomez finished brutally into the bottom corner in the 58th minute, a shocking moment of decisiveness in a game drowning in sloppy passing and chippy challenges.

A miserable defeat for the Fire was rescued by another surprising drop of creativity six minutes from time; Thiago laid the ball off to Rolfe twenty-five yards out, and for the first time in the game, the U.S. striker took a moment to look up and delay his pass to precisely the right moment, chipping the ball around the defenders and into Chad Barrett’s path. Barrett, whose Rooney impression extends to the forlorn facial expressions and unfortunate yellow cards, controlled the ball neatly with his first touch and then buried it through the goalkeeper’s legs into the goal.

Before this game, I watched most of Blanco’s outing for Club America today, an engaging affair featuring crisp passing, movement and creativity (particularly from Temo himself), all aspects of the game sadly lacking in the Fire’s moribund performance. Let’s hope video of today’s Fire game doesn’t make its way down to Mexico, or we might never see Blanco in Chicago. It’s certainly evident the Fire need him, as they seemed to have no-one else to turn to (whither Chris Rolfe?) with Mapp subdued and frequently surrounded by defenders on the rare occasions the Fire actually got the ball to him.