COMMERCE CITY — Out of playoff contention, the reeling Rapids will take an 11-game winless streak into their final three games of the season.
The Rapids can’t undo the damage that turned a promising season into a pile of dispiriting losses, but coach Pablo Mastroeni wants them to play with the kind of fire that fueled them early in the season when they were fun to watch.
“I want to get back to the way things were going in the beginning of the year, where, win or lose, we were much more competitive,” Mastroeni said. “We were defensively tighter, making it hard for teams to break us down, and really just grinding out results. That was a feature of who we were at the beginning of the year.”
It’s been hard for Rapids fans to watch their team lose some of its competitive spirit. After all, their coach was the ultimate competitor. Mastroeni has consistently blamed a loss of confidence as the losses mounted, and injuries have certainly been another cause, especially the at center back. Before the winless streak began, the Rapids scored 31 goals versus 24 goals against. Since then they have scored 10 and yielded 30.
“I always said great defensive shape leads to great attacking attempts,” Mastroeni said. “As the season has gone on, and through this stretch, I don’t think we defended well enough as a group, and I’m talking about 11 players, not the back four. Being loose defensively as a group, we always seemed to be chasing the game.
“When you’re chasing the game, now you become even looser, because you’re anxious and you want to right a wrong.”
In training this week, Mastroeni’s focus has been on getting 11 men committed to defending when the other team has the ball and 11 committed to attacking when the Rapids win it.
“Moving not as individuals but moving as a group, and (with) that spirit we had when we were at our best this year, that we’ve lost along the way because of the circumstances we’ve been in, the amount of losses we’ve taken,” Mastroeni said. “It’s just natural to want to do your own thing and solve it your own way.”
Two of their last three games will be against teams with winning records (FC Dallas and Vancouver), but this week they seemingly have a winnable game at Chivas USA, which has the second-worst record (7-18-6) in MLS. Colorado’s on July 25.
With his team’s playoff chances gone, Mastroeni may shake up his lineups.
“It’s an opportunity to look at guys that didn’t get a lot of playing time, all the while making sure you’re approaching the game the right way from a preparation standpoint,” Mastroeni said. “Not just throwing guys out there and saying, ‘Hey, good luck.’ Hopefully they provide a spark we haven’t had in a while.”
John Meyer: 303-954-1616, jmeyer@denverpost.com or twitter.com/johnmeyer
