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Sports

Rapids shoot for second straight win against Sounders

By Sports Network
Published | Updated

Commerce City, CO (SportsNetwork.com) - The Colorado Rapids will go for a second consecutive victory on Saturday when the club welcomes Western Conference rivals Seattle Sounders FC to Dick's Sporting Goods Park.

After opening the season with three consecutive scoreless draws and a loss to New England, Pablo Mastroeni's club finally broke out and got their first win in a big way with a 4-0 thrashing of FC Dallas last time out.

Dominique Badji needed less than two minutes to score Colorado's first goal of the season, and Dillon Powers doubled the lead in the 43rd minute.

Gabriel Torres followed with a goal 20 minutes from time and Dillon Serna came off the bench and capped the win with a wonderful strike, allowing the team to breathe a big sigh of relief while handing Dallas a second successive defeat.

"I'm so happy. I'm so happy because all the work the guys did during the week. The came in today and executed the perfect plan," said acting head coach Claudio Lopez. "I want to congratulate the guys, Pablo (Mastroeni) and the coaching staff because they worked hard all week. The spent two months in the pre-season doing this so we could see something today. I hope that we can start with today and more wins. I'm perfect. I'm happy."

"I saw they can execute the perfect plan," said Lopez of the team's fourth shutout in five games. "All the training and planning for this game became real today and we don't have anything to say to the guys because every line; the fullbacks, the midfield, the forwards, they executed everything that we asked for them to do."

Seattle, meanwhile, is coming off a 1-0 loss to the Los Angeles Galaxy, thanks to a first-half goal off the head of Alan Gordon and 10 saves from goalkeeper Jaime Penedo.

"It's the game of soccer," said Sounders head coach Sigi Schmid. "Last week I didn't think we played well, and we walked off the field 1-0 winners. And this week I thought we played pretty well. I thought we had more chances, more clean-cut changes. Their goalkeeper comes up with a ton of saves -- some which hit him, some saves he makes -- and we end up losing the game 1-0. I don't think, based on our performance, that we deserved to lose."

"We just didn't finish," added defender Brad Evans. "Personally, I know I had three that I could have done a lot better with. It was just a frustrating game knowing that we played pretty well and were in control of the game at the beginning before their goal changed things. It seemed like we were getting the bulk of the chances."

These teams met three times last season, with Seattle winning all three matches by a combined score of 9-2, including a 4-1 thumping of the Rapids at DSG Park in their most recent meeting on Oct. 5, 2014.