KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Skhkelzen Gashi's first MLS goal delivered the victory – but before that, his play in the mouth of his own net kept the Colorado Rapids in position to take three huge road points from what was the first-place team in the Western Conference.
Fifteen minutes after he cleared Ike Opara's set-piece header off the line with the Rapids up 1-0, Gashi scored an 82nd-minute winner on the rebound to lift Colorado to a 2-1 victory over Sporting Kansas City1619324339" tabindex="0">on Wednesday night.
He was reluctant to embrace the hero's role afterward, though.
“I'm just a player,” Gashi told reporters. “We had only 14 players 1619324340" tabindex="0">tonight, and everyone on the bench, everyone on the pitch, wanted to win 1619324341" tabindex="0">tonight. It was good, off the line, but we did a very good job on defense 1619324342" tabindex="0">tonight.”
Gashi's goal capped a sequence that began with a bad square-pass giveaway from Sporting midfielder Benny Feilhaber. Colorado's Dillon Serna launched a rocket from distance on the play, only to see the ball smack the crossbar and bounce back straight to Gashi for the putback past Sporting goalkeeper Tim Melia.
“The finish is class,” manager Pablo Mastroeni said in his postmatch news conference. “That's something you can't teach. That's innate. That's talent, and that's a lot of hard work from that young man.”
Right place, right time, at both ends of the pitch – and when you throw in the fact that Sporting hit the crossbar twice with nothing to show for it either time, the fortunate and unfortunate bounces elicited a bit of existential philosophy from Mastroeni.
“What are we doing on this planet? It's spinning a million miles an hour, and how are we not feeling it,” he said. “It's a crazy phenomenon – and that's why the game of football is so beautiful, because we can talk tactics, and we can talk this, but it's really the intangibles, and it's the momentum, and it's the belief, and it's the chemistry, and all these little things.”
Mastroeni was just getting warmed up.
“It's the fortune, and not just the fortune,” he said. "It has to hit the woodwork, but you have to be opportunistic to capitalize on it. So if Gashi's not in that position, it just hits the woodwork like everything else. That's why this game's crazy, man.
"I don't know how to explain it. I think there's a lot to this game that stats can't answer, that tactics can't – that human beings can't answer. So, tonight was a fantastic win of spirit and heart, and stones.”
Both of the Rapids' strikes – Gashi's winner and Luis Solignac's 41st-minute strike – were not just due to fortunate bounces. Colorado forced turnovers in Sporting's half of the pitch before capitalizing on the opportunities.
“We've been working on that since preseason,” Mastroeni said. “It's become a feature of our defending from the top. I think the guys did a fantastic job of really making it predictable for the guys behind, and in the process, nicking a few balls and being really dangerous with the possession, especially in the first half.”
