Colorado gets Real

DENVER — The Colorado Rapids continued their regional dominance of Real Salt Lake.

Capitalizing on an early goal, the Rapids played stingy defense the rest of the way to halt RSL's franchise-record four-game unbeaten streak with a workmanlike 1-0 victory Friday night at Invesco Field.

Not only did the win improve Colorado's all-time record against Real to 4-1-1, but it elevated the Rapids into the second place in the Western Conference standings.

"We didn't have our offensive rhythm tonight, that just happens sometimes," said RSL's Chris Klein. "Colorado did a good job of disrupting that. They knew what we were going to try and do, so we have to figure out ways to overcome that."

A handful of first-half injuries to Daniel Torres and Scott Garlick made the prospects of securing a second franchise victory on the road seem very difficult. Torres left the game with a mild concussion in the 13th minute and Garlick departed with a back injury at halftime.

For Torres, he doesn't even really remember what happened. Admittedly dizzy after the game, Torres remembers getting hit in the head by a Terry Cooke shot, but the next thing he remembers was talking with the trainer on the bench. Amazingly, he has no recollection of stepping back onto the field for a couple of minutes while trying to shake off the cobwebs.

Even though the game's only goal was scored shortly after Torres was replaced by Nikolas Besagno, nobody was placing blame. Nonetheless, Torres was definitely the team's top defender so far this year.

"Danny means a lot to our team, when you lose someone that early it kind of throws your rhythm off because he's one of our leaders at the back," said Klein.

Torres left the field in the 13th minute, and three minutes later Colorado scored the game's only goal on a very fortuitous bounce. After rookie Niko Hernandez tried flicking a through ball to Jovan Kirovski near the top of the box, the ball deflected off of RSL defender Nelson Akwari and directly back to Hernandez who buried the 15-yard shot over the head of Scott Garlick.

Throughout a first half controlled by the Rapids, Salt Lake's attacking players never really linked up, with most promising attacks ending in either the ball rolling out of bounds or directly to the keeper. It was also a first half featuring four yellow cards, one of which was awarded to Jeff Cunningham for arguing with the linesman after an offsides call and grabbing the linesman's wrist.

"We're better when we play out of the back and better when we play quickly through the midfield, and we weren't doing that in the first half," said RSL coach John Ellinger.