THE BIG PICTURE
A short-handed Colorado Rapids (7-4-3, 24 points) saw their four-game unbeaten run end with a 3-0 loss at Real Salt Lake (5-4-5, 20 points) on Saturday night at Rio Tinto Stadium. The result marked just the fourth time the Rapids have been held scoreless under Head Coach Robin Fraser. Colorado return to action next weekend when they visit 2021 expansion side Austin FC at Q2 Stadium for the first time.
NUMBERS:
- Collen Warner made his first start of the season. The Denver native played a full 90 minutes for the first time since September 2020.
- Cole Bassett made his 54th MLS appearance tonight, surpassing D Sam Vines for second-most all-time by a Rapids Academy product. The 19-year-old Homegrown Player reached 1,110 minutes played so far this season with his appearance tonight, surpassing his previous single-season career high of 1,063 minutes.
- Steven Beitashour made his second consecutive appearance and the 249th of his MLS career.
- Oliver Larraz made his third appearance of the season. The 19-year-old Denver native signed a Homegrown Player contract with Colorado in March.
QUOTES: HEAD COACH ROBIN FRASER
On the team’s performance:
“We made some really bad mistakes tonight. We made some really bad mistakes and it was always going to be a challenge when we give away the goals that we did… [B]ut we move on.”
* On addressing individual mistakes: *
“How do you handle it? You say, ‘we made a mistake and we move on. There’s a game next week.’ Doesn’t really need to be anything more than that.”
On the Rapids’ supporters’ group, Centennial 38, traveling for the match:
“It was great. I’m dissapointed for them that we didn’t do better—certainly, that we didn’t do better on the scoreboard—but it was tremendous to look up and see how many Rapids there were. It was really heartwarming… and it’s good to know that our fans were here and we had that much support.”
QUOTES: MIDFIELDER JACK PRICE
On the match:
“We’re disappointed obviously with the result. We thought we were comfortable in the game until obviously the goals we conceded, which for our standards they’re below par so we take full responsibility as a team there. We win together, we lose together, so there’s no individual blame on the goals, but we’re very disappointed to come away with nothing because we felt like, like I said before, we were well in the game and comfortable until the mistakes were made.”
On moving forward from the result tonight:
“We’ll get a good week’s training. We’ll get the lads right. Obviously, a few of the boys will probably be a bit disappointed with the goals we conceded... but we’ve got a great bunch of lads. Just have to pick their heads up, you know? It’s one game. It’s a minor blip in the road and we’ll be concentrated on Austin next week and we’ll be doing whatever we can now to concentrate towards that game. Obviously, good teams bounce back like we did with the result against San Jose, which we were disappointed with, so [we] bounced back against Dallas and we’ll be looking to do the same next week.”
