The Colorado Rapids entered Tuesday night sitting atop their CONCACAF Champions League group with a chance to move themselves in pole position for a quarterfinal place.
Santos Laguna had other plans.
The visitors from Mexico turned Dick's Sporting Goods Park into their own personal playground, demolishing a make-shift Rapids defense with speedy wing play and precise passing on their way to a 4-1 victory.
Daniel Luduena opened the scoring for Santos, hitting a long-range blast past Steward Ceus in the 14th minute. Oribe Peralta made it 2-0 in the 27th when he tapped home a square pass after Darwin Quintero beat Colorado's offside trap. Quintero and Christian Suarez added insurance goals in the second half before Brian Mullan added a consolation goal.
Colorado played its starting attack, but rested goalkeeper Matt Pickens and defenders Tyrone Marshall and Kosuke Kimura. Their replacements, Scott Palguta and Danny Earls, were ravaged by Santos' speedy attack. Ceus also struggled at times playing in place of Pickens.
The Rapids loss, coupled with Isidro Metapan's 2-1 vs. Real Espana, dropped Colorado from first to third in Group B. Now the Rapids face the daunting task of likely needing two wins from their final three group matches to secure a place in the second round. With Real Espana looking unlikely to take points from either Metapan or Santos Laguna, the Rapids will have little choice but to beat Real Espana and then travel to beat Metapan or Santos Laguna on the road.
What did you think of Colorado's performance? Impressed with Santos? Think the Rapids can still reach the quarterfinals?
He looks like he’s a foot or two off to me. Of course, the linesman is a couple yards behind, so it probably looked even to him.
I would be a lot happy if he didn’t ask the questions but actually put some comments or opinions about the game. Of course I guess he must be saving that for sports illustrated.
Check the replay of the second one again. Pretty much dead even, maybe a quarter-step offside.
So much for how well MLS teams are doing against the Mexican clubs. I had a feeling that was over hype.
It’s quite possible that Santos Laguna was offside on all four of their goals.
You could make the argument on the first that the offside player obstructed the goal keeper, and the guy was clearly off on the second. Didn’t see a good angle of #’s 3 and 4, but they were really close.
I don’t know that I’ve ever seen that.
Yeah, this is a brewing discontent with the small but active Rapids base. Going out and slashing prices for Santos fans then half-assed making up for it when called on it by Rapids fans (they gave 2 for one tickets, which was too little too late and ultimately saved nobody any money unless they were going in a group), then cutting down on Rapids’ fans chears/chants/swears while letting a Mexican stream of profanity go unfettered for game after game in the CCL. Don’t piss off what base you have, Rapids front office.
Would never have happened if Santos had hired Bradley.
No offense intended, Ives, because I love SBI, but this stuff at the end of every post gets old:
“What did you think of Colorado’s performance? Impressed with Santos? Think the Rapids can still reach the quarterfinals?”
It’s an unnecessary to plead for comments because (1) you get tons of them, and (2) of course those are the things that would be discussed here.
Your right, I think so。
Wow…This one looked like a Mexico/USA match played in the states
Too bad the Rapids attack decided not to show up
Santos didn’t have some of there starters that played chivas. Santos was like Barcelona first touches and Good passing.
The CRapids defenders looked like amateurs tonight. Santos Laguna was shredding them.
Before anyone chastises Rapids fans for a poor turn out… its incorrect the rapids front office basically welcomed santos laguna with open arms and moved them to the TV side while offering them cut rate discounts… meanwhile the Dicks sporting goods park staff harassed their own fans with threats of expulsion for the use of “god damn” whereas santos was getting away with puta and paraphrasing but I had sex with your mother in spanish to children walking by their section