Rapids run ends with loss to Minn.

The Colorado Rapids Open Cup run barely had time to get off the starting blocks before it was over.

Minnesota United’s Emmanuel Reynoso, the Loons’ talisman and Designated Player, scored the game-winning goal in the 87th minute on Thursday in a 2-1 U.S. Open Cup Round of 32 win.

The match finished more than 18 hours after it started due to Wednesday’s postponement after severe weather.

For head coach Robin Fraser, what mattered more than the result was his players’ safety, as Colorado attempted to get the game moved to a different day with such a tight turnaround ahead of LAFC on Saturday.

“U.S. Soccer not really willing to work with us, I don’t really understand that,” he said. ” … Here we end up having to play this game today and then turn around and play in two days in the afternoon. My concern is about player safety, but apparently not everybody shares that concern.”

On Wednesday, Abu Dinaldi opened the scoring for the Loons in the eighth minute and Nico Mezquida answered for the Rapids in the 15th minute.

Diego Rubio had a free kick which initially hit the wall but came back to him, and his follow-up shot was deflected as it fell to the feet of Mezquida who calmly put it away.

Back in the “second leg” on Thursday, both teams were slow to grow into the game as the pitch was slippery. In the 34th minute, on a cross from Diego Rubio, rookie Anthony Markanich rose up to beat D.J. Taylor but his shot was wide. A few minutes later Fragapane had a shot driven low but it went just wide.

In the second half, Colorado opted to sit in. It worked for 42 minutes. In the 87th minute, substitute Emmanuel Reynoso found the winner.

Off a broken play, Reynoso dribbled through a pair of Colorado defenders and beat Irwin at the far post to make it 1-0.

The Loons went down a man only minutes earlier after Brett Kallman received a second yellow card on the afternoon after he took down Jonathan Lewis. The Rapids were unable to take advantage with a free kick or an ensuing corner kick.

“Far too often whenever a guy gets sent off there’s a bit of a subconscious (thought) of, ‘ Ok, we can relax and take it easy and the game will come to us,'” Keegan Rosenberry said. “… Everybody inside the locker room would agree we needed to collectively step things up once that red card comes and push the game forward in our direction.”

With the loss, the Rapids’ Open Cup remains almost too hard to believe. It’s been six consecutive losses to MLS teams with a last win coming in 2006, while the last win in the tournament overall came in 2017.

Colorado will host topof-the-table LAFC at 1:30 p.m. Saturday.