William Yarbrough made two saves to help the Colorado Rapids (12-4-9, 45 points) to a 0-0 draw against Toronto FC (4-15-7, 19 points) on Saturday at DICK’S Sporting Goods Park. The shutout marked Yarbrough’s 10th clean sheet of the season, tied for the league lead, and extends Colorado’s unbeaten streak to 11 games overall—the longest active streak in MLS—and 12 games unbeaten at DICK’S Sporting Goods Park.
Saturday's match marked Robin Fraser’s 50th regular season match as Rapids head coach; Colorado’s 25 wins, 88 points, 82 goals scored and 17 clean sheets under Fraser are the most under any Rapids head coach through his first 50 matches in club history in the post-shootout era.
Notable:
- Colorado extends its unbeaten streak to 11 games, its longest unbeaten run since April to July of 2016, when the Rapids went 8-0-7 (W-L-D) across 15 matches en route to their best regular season finish ever. The Rapids are also unbeaten in their last 12 at DICK’S Sporting Goods Park.
- The Rapids are now 6-1-2 (W-L-D) all-time against Toronto FC at DICK’S Sporting Goods Park. The Rapids have held Toronto scoreless in each of its last five visits.
- The match was Robin Fraser’s 50th in the regular season as Rapids head coach. Fraser has led Colorado to a 25-12-13 (W-L-D) record, with his 25 wins, 88 points, 82 goals scored and 17 clean sheets marking the most by a Rapids head coach through his first 50 games in the post-shootout era.
- With nine games remaining, the Rapids are in third place in the Western Conference, one point behind first-place Sporting KC even on games and seven points ahead of fourth-place LA Galaxy even on games.
- Danny Wilson made his 23rd appearance of the season, tying a single-season Rapids career high set in 2018. He also played his 1,992nd minute of the season, setting a Rapids single-season career high.
- Mark-Anthony Kaye made the 80th start of his MLS career. It was also his ninth with Colorado, tying his 2021 total while with Los Angeles FC.
QUOTES: HEAD COACH ROBIN FRASER
On the match:
“We didn’t create as many chances we would like to have. Toronto did a good job of getting a lot of numbers behind the ball, making it difficult to penetrate them. But certainly if that’s what the team does, then it’s our job to find ways to break them down. We probably weren’t as sharp in the attacking end as we needed to be. At the end of the day, it became a real dog fight. Credit to them. They did a good job of making it difficult for us. While we had a few good moments, probably not many good moments as we would like to have had.”
On if there is a consistent theme in the team’s last four performances:
“I would say it’s not the same over the last four games. I thought in the last four games we created enough chances to win and also we made enough mistakes to lose points, meaning there’s generally one or two mistakes that led to something that led to the game being tied. Tonight was very different. We didn’t concede anything, we didn’t really concede many dangerous opportunities. In that sense, it’s different than it was in the last couple of games and we probably didn’t create as much as we did in the last couple of games. There’s no one thing over the four games. Each game has something that was slightly different, things that we could be a little bit better at.”
QUOTES: MIDFIELDER JACK PRICE
On the match:
“I feel like we’ve been saying it a lot recently. We’re disappointed again to drop two points. We just had a good chat in the changing room about where we want to be in the next nine games. We feel like we’re just not doing enough, including myself, every single person. I know we’ve come a long way and we’re disappointed now with a draw instead of a loss, but still, it’s not enough. People are going to say we’re unbeaten in 11 but we know we should be climbing this table and we should be top by a few points now. Looking at tonight, it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Every single man busts a gut out there, we try our best week in and week out, but we just didn’t do enough on the attacking side. We didn’t create enough chances. At home we have to. We have to be aggressive from the start. We didn’t do enough from the start tonight. We’re waiting for the last 10 minutes, 20 minutes to go at teams. It just wasn’t enough. Like I said, again, we’re saying it a bit too much recently, but we’re very disappointed again with tonight.”
On the team’s patience in attack:
“I feel at the moment, in the first half we were sort of waiting to see how the game was going to unfold. We need to take the games by the scruff of the neck and get after teams, especially here. Like you say, maybe we should have been a bit more patient second half, move the ball side to side because I think it was causing them problems and they were getting tired. I think we were a bit impatient in getting the ball forward, just ramming it down the attacking players’ throats. Maybe just go through the middle a little bit more and use myself and the pivots in there. Just a bit more patience. We felt like that last 15, 20 minutes we wanted to go and get that goal so badly. We just rushed things. There was enough time left in the game. We’ve scored many late goals here at home. We just have to be a little bit more patient, a little bit more quality around the box and just finish it off at the end. We’re getting chances, tonight maybe not so much as the other games but we’re still getting into good areas. I feel like, like I said in the changing room today, none of us are doing just quite enough right now. We all need to step up and do a little bit more because we have nine cup finals now to win this league. We fancy ourselves to go ahead and finish top of the West, but we need to do a little bit more.”
