With their backs against the wall, the Colorado Rapids earned a crucial victory against Toronto FC to keep the Rapids' playoff hopes alive, despite playing two-thirds of the match down a man.
Although the Rapids moved ahead of the Columbus Crew in the race for the final playoff spot, Colorado still needs to win the rest of its games and hope for a slip-up by the Chicago Fire.
"You play to win," said Rapids head coach Fernando Clavijo. "You play regardless of what you have. You play for the club and for the fans. The benefit of playing and winning is the playoffs and a championship. But we should not look at anything any differently for the next two games, regardless of whether we have a chance to go to the playoffs or not. We play to win every game, and anybody who is on my team better have that attitude or else they won't play."
The game's lone goal came in the 44th minute, when Jovan Kirovski converted a penalty kick, his sixth goal of the season and fourth from the spot. That goal came eight minutes after Mehdi Ballouchy was sent off.
"It seems like we keep repeating the same thing every week. We were playing with ten players and really put ourselves in the hole. The team kept fighting, playing and we managed to get the three points," said Clavijo.
"[When we went down two men] I was very concerned because we had a couple of chances to put them away. Jovan forced a great save from the goalkeeper for one of them. We need to put those games away, even with 10 men, and we are capable of doing that."
Referee Kevin Stott showed Ballouchy a straight red card for a studs-up slide tackle on Carl Robinson.
"I agreed with the call," said Clavijo. "Anytime you go in spikes up you have to expect [a red card]. But I thought the consistency [of the refereeing] throughout the game was very poor."
Yet the Rapids were up to the challenge of playing with 10 men. The goal gave them a cushion, then they held on even after going two men down for the final minutes.
"In the second half we couldn't attack as much with 10 men. Toronto was pushing pretty hard, but we stayed organized in the back and everyone communicated so much," said Pablo Mastroeni. "Facundo [Erpen], [Mike] Petke, and Brandon [Prideaux] were wild [and] the guys in the middle played hard for 90 minutes straight."
The Rapids held Toronto without a shot for the first three-quarters of the match. Yet it took two quality saves from goalkeeper Bouna Coundoul over the final 15 minutes to secure the victory.
"Everybody brought it. We all pulled together [playing a man down]," said defender Kosuke Kimura, who was starting his second game since being called up from the reserves. "I just tried to think of it like a reserve game. I went out there and did my best to stay calm and be confident."
But Mastroeni was sent off in the 88th minute when he received a second yellow card in the game. Although Mastroeni will miss the next match, he remained positive about playoff chances.
"We are still in it and we are still battling," said Mastroeni. "We need to go to Chivas and get a result. We have a good team and we have great players. We are fighters; we are not going to go down easy. Hopefully we can put something together and create some luck."
Colin Walsh is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
