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Real Salt Lake ends the Colorado Rapids season for third consecutive year
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Time to let the grass recover at Dick's Sporting Goods Park.
When Real Salt Lake started a group of fans from Salt Lake City and a group from Colorado got together to create the Rocky Mountain Cup. The idea was simply to create a little rivalry between Colorado and our neighbors on the other side of the continental divide.
Boo-birds had criticized the cup competition as an attempt to manufacture a rivalry where one did not exist. Rivalries must be organic, not contrived, they said. They were wrong. Rivalries spring from many different seeds. Sometimes they are regional in nature, sometimes they center around controversy, and sometimes they are built around a long series of games. The Colorado Rapids and the Real Salt Lake rivalry has all three now, but it started with the creation of the Rocky Mountain Cup series.
Real Salt Lake won the Rocky Mountain Cup for the third time in a row on Saturday. For Rapids fans the loss of the Rocky Mountain Cup is just so much salt in a bigger wound. Before taking the cup from the Rapids, Real had already ended the Rapids season. The first two goals Real scored was all they needed to end the Rapids season. The third did the trick of taking the cup.
The game went south early for the Rapids, like so many recent games, when Real scored the opening goal in the fifteenth minute. The goal resulted from a failed clearance on a corner, that preceded several other failed clearances, that ended with Robbie Findley heading the ball past a re-positioning Preston Burpo, into the goal. The goal scene was like an afternoon at DIA, lots of bodies in a small ares, some moving with purpose, some looking for directions. In this scenario all the ones looking for directions were wearing Rapids blue.
The Rapids plan, as it has in so many games recently, was to absorb pressure until Real Salt Lake made a mistake. As with all the recent games the plan conceded too much to Real, and then forced the Rapids into the uncomfortable position of having to come from behind. Down a goal in the fifteenth minute the Rapids were forced to commit to the attack opening the Rapids up to a Real Salt Lake counter-attack.
Counter-attacking was exactly what Real Salt Lake did, and they were very good at it. The Rapids cut off several counters before Robbie Findley broke in on goal. Preston Burpo was stuck in no-man's land with the speedster Findley rushing in on him. Left with many bad options Burpo chose perhaps the worst and rushed Findley. The choice ended badly, as Findley coolly finished by chipping his shot over the rushing Burpo and into the goal for his second of the night.
After the second goal the Rapids re-doubled their efforts, but to no avail. The half-ended with the Rapids scoreless, and the second half started with Real pressing the Rapids again. The Rapids absorbed the pressure at the start of the second and then began pressing the issue. The Rapids attack began to generate some shots on Nick Rimando's goal, but the goalie proved to be up to the challenge by making several fine saves to deny the Rapids.
As the season slipped away from them the Rapids pushed with more desperation eventually giving Real Salt Lake the opening through which they made the final deadly thrust. With five minutes left Real's, Yura Movsisyan broke the Rapids offside trap, easily out ran Cory Gibbs, and coolly finished past Preston Burpo. The two goal lead was quite a mountain for the Rapids to climb. The third goal turned the mountain into Everest.
The third goal also broke the Rapids grip on the Rocky Mountain Cup contest. Down two to zero the Rapids were left with the possibility of winning the rivalry's cup competition on the strength of the teams' previous meeting. The third goal robbed the Rapids of even that small consolation.
By games end, the Rapids organization had seemingly conceded the season. Prior to the New England match Gary Smith was already looking to next year when he was quoted by MLSnet.com saying, "We need better players. What was very clear tonight was that some of the guys in that changing room are not good enough."
Amazingly, the Rapids still had a hope of reaching the playoffs as the New England Revolution were set to face the league leading Columbus Crew in Columbus. A Columbus win would have given the Rapids the last playoff spot. Instead, the Revolution showed the Rapids the kind of effort required of a team that is playing for its life, on their way to defeating the league leading Crew.
For the fans, the New England win made little difference. Certainly not the difference that the droning team of announcers on ESPN thought it would. By Sunday afternoon the prospect of two more games was as appetizing as a greasy pork sandwich offered after vomiting attack. The New England win alleviated Rapids fans of such torments.
