The Col­orado Rapids drew for the sec­ond straight match late Sat­ur­day night, com­ing home from San Jose with a 1–1 result. Kei Kama­ra head­ed down an 81st-minute cor­ner kick from Cole Bas­sett to equal­ize late in the first of four match­es over a 12-day period.

Here are three obser­va­tions as the Rapids remain win­less since the MLS restart:

Pids Playing Time

Diego Rubio has start­ed six straight games for the Rapids, but has not scored in his last 11 shots. He even wore the captain’s arm­band in San Jose with Jack Price com­ing off the bench.

Mean­while, Andre Shinyashi­ki has start­ed in 10 of the Rapids’ last 14 games dat­ing back to last year. Three of the games he didn’t crack the XI because he was hurt. Yet Shinyashi­ki has also strug­gled to pro­duce, with his last goal com­ing against the Sounders last season.

Bas­sett start­ed his sec­ond straight game and once again played well. He was on set-piece duty with Price benched and the Rapids tal­lied their first set-piece goal since March. It was the third goal off a restart for Col­orado this year, which is down from 2019 when the Rapids bagged a league-best 19 set-piece goals.

“We feel like we cre­ate dan­ger­ous chances off of set pieces,” Robin Fras­er said. “But I don’t think about how we score goals, just that we score them. Our team’s con­fi­dence on set pieces is unwavering.”

Nonethe­less, the Rapids aren’t scor­ing many goals now. The 11 they’ve net­ted this sea­son is third-worst in the West­ern Con­fer­ence. Bassett’s two assists in two weeks have been a nice spark, but it’s not enough.

“We have to put away our chances ear­ly on,” Bas­sett said. “… I think we’re start­ing to cre­ate a bit more chances than we were. But we got to be clin­i­cal in the final third.”

Waterfall

The Rapids fell into a tie for last place in the west. Only Chica­go and expan­sion-sides Mia­mi and Nashville have few­er points than Col­orado, which is tied with San Jose and Van­cou­ver at the bot­tom of the table. But there is hope: The White­caps have played one more game and all three are just two points from the eighth and final play­off spot. This is the fourth straight sea­son that the Rapids have spent time in last place.

“We did a num­ber of things to cre­ate decent oppor­tu­ni­ties and I thought, for the most part, we defend­ed quite well and made it dif­fi­cult for them to cre­ate chances,” Fras­er said of Saturday’s effort. “For me, it’s a good night. It’s a suc­cess­ful night.

“We cer­tain­ly feel like we could have won the game.”

History!

Kama­ra net­ted his 129th MLS goal and is now four away from tying MLS-leg­end Jaime Moreno (133) for the fourth-most goals in league his­to­ry. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for the Rapids strik­er, he got no clos­er to first as MLS all-time lead­ing scor­er Chris Won­dolows­ki scored his 162nd career goal on a penal­ty kick. The two have dueled before, but with each over 35 this might be the last time we see The Head­mas­ter and Won­do each tal­ly again in the same match.