NOTABLE NUMBERS:
- Jack Price made his 100th appearance with the club.
- Younes Namli scored his first goal of the season and his third with the Rapids. It was Colorado’s 10th goal off a corner kick this season.
- Keegan Rosenberry made his 160th MLS appearance and his 80th with Colorado.
- With the result, RSL wins the 2021 Rocky Mountain Cup.
COLORADO RAPIDS HEAD COACH ROBIN FRASER
On the match:
“It felt like a really strange game. For some reason, I don’t feel like we got into a very good rhythm. Credit to RSL. They took their chances well. For us, it wasn’t our best game. Certainly we had some good moments offensively and defensively, but not enough and not in the right moments. As I said, there are positives to take away. There are definitely some good performances. But in the end, certainly this one will sting a bit.”
On Younes Namli scoring his first goal of 2021:
“It’s great for him to get in and score a goal for us. Obviously good for us and good for him. He’s incredibly talented and it’s just good for him to get back into playing more and more competition and more and more minutes, different conditions and that sort of thing. Tonight was a night when, with him coming off the bench, we wanted to get something special out of him and obviously we did.”
COLORADO RAPIDS MIDFIELDER YOUNES NAMLI
On the match:
“I’ll keep it simple and keep it real. It was just not good enough. They get a goal way too early and we already knew that getting wide and getting crosses towards [Damir] Kreilach, that’s what they have pretty much success with. We let it happen anyway. When you concede a goal that early you have to try and go and chase. You have to score two goals to win the game. We had a period in the second half where we were close to getting the 2-2, after we bounced back with the 2-1. Overall, I’m not going to lie, it was just not good enough. That’s how simple it is.”
On the message from the coaching staff when he entered the match:
“It was obvious that our play on the field with the ball was not flowing well. We came in and tried to get more of, I’d say, a grip on the game. Try to play with the ball a little more. We just say, be brave and try to play out of situations and not send a long ball too early. That’s what we tried to do. Like I said, we had a period in the second half where, when we get out of their pressure at some point, when we’re brave enough to play and receive the ball, we created a couple chances. Mikey [Barrios] had one, I think it was after a corner kick where he hit the inside of the post. Jonny [Lewis] had one where he hits the crossbar. Those are moments, of course, it’s easy to say now if we score then it’s a different game, but the truth is, at the end, overall it was just not good enough over 90 minutes.”
