Colorado Rapids extended their unbeaten record at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park to 14 games, but for the second home game in a row they were held to a frustrating goalless draw, this time at the hands of San Jose Earthquakes.
Tim Howard made one fine save in the first half, to deny Fatai Alashe, but it was his opposite number, David Bingham, who was the busier. Twice he blocked efforts from Dominique Badji, while making himself big to force Marlon Hairston to toe-poke one wide, with referee Armando Villarreal waving away appeals for a penalty.
With Real Salt Lake’s surprise loss to Houston Dynamo, the Rapids are now one of only two teams yet to lose at home. The other is LA Galaxy. But they will feel that three points evaded them, against a Quakes side that arrived in Commerce City with just one road win in more than a year.
“There’s a lot of positives to take away from the game, but I’d like to see that hunger and that belief that we’re going to go in and we’re going to smash and unfortunately tonight it wasn’t there, but we’ve got a week now of preparation before we go to Vancouver,” head coach Pablo Mastroeni said postgame.
That is now five ties at home for Colorado, three of which have been scoreless. Of the trio of 0-0 ties, this was one in which they had at least two clear-cut chances to score.
Colorado began both the first and second half the stronger, only for San Jose to settle and ease into the contest as each half wore on. Jared Watts made a last-ditch tackle in the dying minutes to keep the parity, while substitute Quincy Amarikwa and Shea Salinas posed a few questions in the latter stages.
“We had some good chances and a great opportunity with Dallas tying to jump up a little bit and inch a little bit closer,” midfielder Sam Cronin said after the game. “So I think we’re disappointed with the tie, we expect to win here at home. We just didn’t do quite enough, so it’s on us. We weren’t unlucky, we just didn’t quite play good enough.”
For the Rapids, Shkëlzen Gashi and Marco Pappa came off the bench, having missed the trip to FC Dallas, while Caleb Calvert made his first appearance for the Rapids at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park.
The Rapids remain undefeated on home soil, but they will view this as two points dropped and, on a night when leaders FC Dallas were held at New York City FC, a missed opportunity also.
“I think we feel that being at home we had things in our own hands to go chase the Supporters’ Shield. It’s a hard-fought game,” defender Axel Sjoberg said. “San Jose brings physicality, they try to make it hard for us to play and we knew it was going to be a battle until the end. We didn’t really take our chances when we had them. If we don’t score, we’re not going to win.
These two teams meet again at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park on October 13, by which time a point may not be enough, for either side’s ambitions.
