COMMERCE CITY — Rapids coach Gary Smith beckoned a visitor to look over his shoulder at a computer screen on his office desk, showing a replay of Omar Cummings’ gorgeous goal Saturday in the home opener against the Chicago Fire. Smith wanted to share one of the finer points of the game, a detail few would have noticed on the play.
Cummings fired a well-placed shot into the lower right corner of the Chicago goal from about 25 yards out for the game’s first goal, but Smith was keen to point out midfielder Mehdi Ballouchy’s role. Ballouchy passed the ball to Cummings, then made a run into the penalty area, pulling a defender his way and giving Cummings an opening for the shot.
“Watch what the defender does,” Smith said. “See? (Ballouchy) just takes him back two yards. He just gives (Cummings) a fraction of a second to get his head up and finish. If Mehdi doesn’t make that run, maybe (Cummings) doesn’t get a shot, because the center back squeezes in tightly. Those little moments are important.”
The Rapids supposedly play a 4-4-2 formation, but Smith considers the wide midfielders — usually Ballouchy on the right and Colin Clark on the left — to be critically important attackers. He refers to them, along with Cummings and Conor Casey, as “the four forwards.”
Clark gets it, but Smith wants to see Ballouchy take advantage of the freedom Smith gives him. Cummings’ goal was an example of how it can work, and showed how a player can contribute to the attack without the ball.
Clark back in form.
Clark tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee Aug. 11, a month to the day after making his U.S. national team debut against Honduras, but he’s almost fully recovered from the injury and subsequent surgery.
“It feels good,” said Clark, a native of Fort Collins. “It feels 100 percent. I think the biggest thing for me now is getting the mental aspect 100 percent. There’s still a little bit of doubt, I guess you could say.”
Clark’s torn ACL was replaced by one from a cadaver, and a tear in his meniscus was sutured.
Cummings hoping this year is different.
When Cummings scored Saturday, it was his second goal of the season. Thus last year and this year he scored in each of the first two games.
But Cummings didn’t score his third goal last year until the 11th game, “something I would not like to carry on over into this year,” Cummings said with a grin.
Two-fer trip.
The Rapids play at Kansas City twice in four days. Saturday’s game is a league game, and Tuesday’s is a U.S. Open Cup match. Then they return home to play Toronto on April 18.
