Yapi hour came right on time.
Facing an uphill battle for a playoff berth with nine games to go, Colorado Rapids forward Darren Yapi put his team on his back. With his first-ever brace in a 2-1 win over Minnesota United at Allianz Field in St. Paul, Minn., the 20-year-old gave the Rapids new life days after losing their best player to a transfer.
Starting the day in 10th place in the Western Conference — out of the playoff picture — the win put Colorado in eighth and sets it up strongly for a relatively easy schedule to round the regular season out. Minnesota could have jumped Vancouver for second in the West with a win.
Yapi broke the deadlock in the 60th minute with a run down the left flank, then a move toward the middle and a calm, powerful finish toward the right side netting. Sam Vines provided the impressive ball into space in transition for his second assist of the season.
The youngster struck again in the 70th, again in transition. After a string of quick passes on a counterattack, Rafael Navarro played Yapi in on the right side of the box, and Yapi sniped the bottom left corner past Minnesota keeper Dayne St. Clair. The tallies were Yapi’s fifth and sixth of the season — a career single-season high that keeps rising.
“This can give us momentum going into this last (part of the season). I’m happy to have scored my first brace and honestly just want to keep going,” Yapi said. “Every time I start, or even off the bench, I ask myself the same question, which is, ‘How can I help the team win?’ In any way, whether it’s offensively or defensively, just finding ways I can help the team is huge for me.”
Those two plays alone, in succession, were as good as the Rapids have looked in transition all year. Impressive for a team that just transferred Djordje Mihailovic, one of the MLS’s most creative attacking players, to Toronto.
“(The transition game) was part of the reason we started the front three that we did with Calvin (Harris), Yapi and (Navarro). We knew three of the most powerful, fastest guys could keep close together and create scenarios of our front three against their back three,” Rapids coach Chris Armas said. “It’s going to be interesting moving forward. … In the run of play, we were pretty stingy against a really good team.”
Minnesota responded quickly to the Rapids’ second goal with a wide-open finish from about eight yards out by Tani Oluwaseyi in the 73rd minute.
For Colorado, life post-Mihailovic seems to be lived by committee, especially with two central midfielders (Josh Atencio and Connor Ronan) out with injuries.
Without them, Armas deployed a 3-4-3 for the first time since the second leg of the L.A. Galaxy playoff series after losing the first, 5-0. These have been the only times the Rapids have played the formation, both following disastrous moments in the Armas era. Only this time, unlike a 4-1 home loss to the Galaxy, it worked.
Colorado, now firmly in the playoff mix, will face five opponents 10th or lower in their respective conference standings for its final eight games. In reverse fixtures this season, the Rapids failed to beat two of them.
“I’m always looking for things the boys can rally behind. This game could be (season-defining), but we have a lot built into this group. There’s a lot they play for, big aspirations to achieve the ultimate prize, so there’s a lot of motivation for the guys,” Armas said. “We come on the road to win. … The team’s been through some ups and downs recently, some tough stuff with injuries and different things, but they’re an impressive group with the way they stick together.”
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