Rapids B Side Outclasses Switchbacks

The Rapids easily showed off Colorado Springs last night 4-1 and the game wasn't that close.  The Rapids had a shutout until into second half stoppage time when the Springs finally broke through.

The first 25 minutes were fairly dull with the Rapids having the majority of possession but not doing much with it.  In the 26th minute Cronin slipped a perfect pass through the Switchbacks dfense for Badji to redirect for the first goal.  That was followed up 6 minutes alter by a free kick cross from Serna that Ensign Greenspan headed home, scoring in his first professional game.

The second half was more of the same and the game was really over in the 62' when Josh Phillips went two footed through Badji's ankle and rightfully saw red.  Happened right in front of the section that C38 claimed which gave the post-tackle shoving a colorful soundtrack.  :D  Dillon Serna administered the killing blows with a great individual goal in the 65' and an easy tap in 3 minutes into stoppage.

The remaining 16 teams will be broken in to 4 groups of 4 based on geography.  Almost certainly it will be Colorado, KC, Dallas, and Houston. as FSL will go with the 3 remaining West Coast teams.  Then the matchups in those groups of 4 will be drawn randomly.  We'll find out the matchup at 9am tomorrow and the game will be played June 30th or July 1st.

Other Notes:

• Really the only change I would have made to the lineup was not playing 3 holding mids to start but it worked.  Otherwise that's' about as good of a starting XI as I could have hoped for.
• Congrats to the Harringtons, who had a child yesterday (which is why Michael wasn't available for the game).
• Cronin had the armband until he was replaced by Sarvas, who got ti from him.  When Moor checked in later Sarvas kept it.
• Seeing Moor at left back was...odd
• You could tell that O'Neill was not all that concerned about a USL team after playing against the best youth in the world in France.
• Great to see Greenspan starting and scoring.  All I could think of was the classic Championship/Football Manager line, "He's scored on his debut!".
• Nice rendition of "In the Navy" by C38 after the goal.
• Hairston looked solid at LB.
• Eloundou loves the long ball down the left side trying to beat the offside trap.
• The Switchbacks left back (#30) has some talent, but needs to learn when and when not to get chippy.  Down 3-0 and a man is not the time to pester the other team's best player or antagonize the fans.
• That said, Serna was stupid biting on his play and was somewhat lucky that the ref didn't buy 30's partial dive and only showed yellow.
• With the player sue last night we should be able to see almost a full strength lineup on Friday.

Man of the Match: Dillon Serna.  2 goals and an assist makes this an easy choice.