COMMERCE CITY, Colo. - Perhaps it was inevitable. The Colorado Rapids opened their new Dick's Sporting Goods Park with the first win on Opening Day. A week later, the park saw its first tie. Sooner or later, the Rapids would have to lose at home.
But Saturday's 3-1 loss to Houston Dynamo came far too soon for the Rapids' liking, essentially putting them back on square one as they try to establish a commanding advantage on their home field.
"We should be killing teams at home," midfielder Terry Cooke said after Saturday's match. "We've got to use the pitch to our advantage."
Colorado looked in command early in the game, getting an unassisted goal from striker Roberto Brown in the fifth minute and maintaining the lead - and, for the most part, possession - throughout the half.
But Houston came out charging into the second half, and the Rapids saw their momentum slip away, slowly at first until they were ultimately buried by a Dynamo explosion of three goals in 13 minutes.
"It was a tale of two halves, wasn't it?" said Cooke. "Kind of cliché, Jekyll and Hyde. We controlled the game at halftime, one-nil. Second half they seemed to throw more people up front and it took us out of our rhythm, out of our game. They were sending more bodies forward and we couldn't cope with that. It killed us - they got three early goals in the second half in the space of 20 minutes and it killed the game."
Even when Colorado controlled the ball, it had trouble getting at Houston's back line, too often losing possession in the midfield. To Houston's credit, though they couldn't complete their opportunities in the first half, they tended to take the ball into the far forward third, building the pressure until they finally hit the breaking point.
"Little by little they started possessing the ball better and passing the ball better, and we could never get going and we paid the price for it," Colorado head coach Fernando Clavijo said after the match. "We lost the ball way too easy, and they were not even putting us under pressure, we just lost it to transition."
In the second and third games played at their new soccer facility, the Rapids have played conservative soccer through much of the game. In their last home game they were forced to play defensively when they lost Roberto Brown to a red card in the game's sixth minute, playing a man down for the rest of the game and finishing with a tie.
This time the Rapids got conservative after establishing a 1-0 lead against a Houston team that had lost its last two games by scores of 1-0.
"We sat back a little bit because we got the goal," Cooke said. "You've got to go and get the second, go and get the third. We've got to start punishing teams here. You keep it one-nil as long as possible, sooner or later they're going to get a chance. They got three chances the second half and put it in the back of the net."
Part of the Rapids restrained approach can be attributed to the absence of starting defenders Brandon Prideaux, out for a month with a right knee meniscus injury, and Ugo Ihemelu, out for a game with left knee tendonitis.
"It's still early in the season," Clavijo said of the decision to rest Ihemelu. "He is a big factor for us at the back; we don't want to risk losing him for more than just one game. He should definitely be back by Thursday. It is one of those things that if you use him today you may lose him for more than one game."
Dan Gargan made his first start of the season and midfielder Pablo Mastroeni dropped back to join the defensive line, but the absence of half of the team's starting back line became increasing evident throughout the game. With midfielder Kyle Beckerman toning his game down after a yellow card for a reckless foul in the third minute, conditions were ripe for the Rapids to drop back too easily, unnecessarily yielding the midfield.
"I thought that Kyle and Jovan [Kirovski] were too deep," Clavijo said of his central midfielders. "They never really participated in the offense until the last 10 minutes. There was a lot of room for [Houston] to break through the midfield."
The Rapids found little to be encouraged about in the match. Even with a lead at the half, whether they acknowledged their problems in the interval or not, the team clearly recognized that they were off their game for the better part of 90 minutes.
"Obviously, we were vulnerable," Cooke said of Houston's ability to consistently penetrate and ultimately find the net. "We didn't keep the ball in certain areas and we got punished for it. That's the thing we have to work on, is building the ball to the final third, keeping the ball in their box and be more patient with it and create chances, because even with the first goal, we didn't create anything.
"We were lucky to get our first goal; it ricocheted off a free kick. We didn't create anything the whole game. We need to work on being more creative, more patient, and having a bit more imagination to try and break teams down."
Saturday it was the Rapids who broke down, crumbling quickly after losing the lead in the 63rd minute, with yellow cards coming to Brown and Mastroeni in the 66th and 67th, for dissent and a reckless foul, repectively. Conor Casey entered the game in the 61st minute, and too earned a yellow card for dissent in the 91st minute.
Perhaps most troublesome was the fact that the problems on the field reflected mental lapses more than physical deficiencies or problems in execution.
"We didn't play intelligent enough," Clavijo summed up. "It was one of those games that we just couldn't scratch it out. I've never thought that we've played so poorly.
"You don't want these kinds of games to happen at home, but it happened at home," he added. "We have to regroup and look at Thursday to play."
The brief break between games should be welcome to the Rapids. They've got their first loss at their new stadium out of their system, and hopefully some of their most disappointing play will follow just as quickly. Thursday, and a rematch with Real Salt Lake, can't come soon enough for a team still trying to establish its identity and find the advantage in its new home.
Owen Perkins is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
