The Big Picture
The Colorado Rapids (2-4-6, 12 pts) saw their nine-game unbeaten streak come to end in a 2-1 loss at home to MLS Cup Runners-Up Philadelphia Union (5-4-2, 17 pts) on Saturday night. Midfielder Connor Ronan scored the Rapids’ goal on the night, his fourth goal contribution in his last two appearances.
Notable:
- Tonight’s result ended the Rapids’ unbeaten run of nine matches across all competitions (4-0-5).
- M Connor Ronan scored the opening goal in tonight’s match off a 38th minute penalty kick. With it, he’s now scored and registered three assists in his last two appearances.
- D Moïse Bombito made his MLS debut when he entered the match in the 81st minute. Bombito was selected with the third overall pick in the 2023 MLS SuperDraft by the Rapids.
- M Sam Nicholson registered 79 minutes tonight, surpassing 5,000 minutes all-time as a member of the Rapids (5,076 minutes), becoming the ninth active player on the roster to register a minimum of 5,000 minutes with the club.
COLORADO RAPIDS HEAD COACH ROBIN FRASER
On the match:
“We were poor. We were poor to start the game. Think Philadelphia made it tough for us to get into any kind of rhythm, but at the end of the day, we just weren't particularly sharp on the night, sharp with the ball. That left us in a lot of defending situations. We didn't defend particularly well, but my message to them was the urgency that we saw in the last 30 minutes, we need to see that from the beginning. They know that. That's what they've been doing for a number of weeks now, so today, I'd certainly like to think is an aberration.”
On Connor Ronan:
“He's really intelligent. Connor [Ronan] is a really intelligent player, and he also plays with an extremely high level of intensity, or engagement—maybe that's a better way to put it. So when you have an intelligent player who's always engaged, he oftentimes just knows where he needs to be based on the positioning of the others and the movement of others. And he has been good for us in so many ways throughout the year. Different times he's been more of an attacking player, different times he's helped start attacks, different times, he's defended really well, so he's been able to help us in a number of different ways, and the question about how does he adapt to the rotating players, and that—it really comes down to his intelligence and his awareness.”
On the team’s performance:
“I would say this is an aberration. I think the litmus test has been week in, week out for the last number of weeks, and we've shown that we can compete against the best teams in the league. And we weren't good enough tonight, and their front group is excellent the way they combine and play off each other really, really good. But we've played against teams that are really good. We played against LAFC. LAFC is pretty good, and I just look at it, and sometimes, you have games like this. And it's not—I don't say that to excuse it because it's never okay to have a poor performance, but again, if you've played long enough, you've been around it long enough, you know it happens from time to time. The question really is, as I said, this sort of thing happens. I feel like most teams have at least one stinker a year, like one real stinker a year. The question is, what's the response going to be? So, if you're talking about what the test is, the test is Wednesday coming off of this performance.”
COLORADO RAPIDS MIDFIELDER CONNOR RONAN
On the match:
“Disappointing, obviously, is the initial feeling from the game especially after going up 1-0 in the game. I feel like we kind of lost control a little bit, which happens sometimes when you go a goal up. We kind of come away from what we was doing, which got us the goal in the first place. Just disappointing. It would have been nice to see it out until halftime up 1-0, and then that would have put us in a much better position going into the second half, and then obviously to concede that goal just before halftime was disappointing and took the steam out of us a little bit. But I still felt like we come out for the second half like we've got a lot of energy, getting in behind them quite a bit, but just unfortunate they got us on the break with a goal, and towards the end of the game obviously that just got away from us a little bit.”
On his recent form:
“I feel like I'm playing with confidence at the minute. I feel like I'm coming off the back of a good game against LA, and I think that always helps going into next game, so I was confident going into the night. Thankful Diego let me take [the penalty kick]. I'm always going to pick a spot and go for that from before the referees blew the whistle and thankfully it went in.”
