Preseason Results and Players Heading Out

Time to catch up on the last couple of preseason games, but first a couple of pieces of player news.  Draftee Alan Winn was signed yesterday by Nashville SC of the USL.  Nashville is coached by former Rapids manager (and MLS Cup winner) Gary Smith and also features two members of that Cup winning team, Kosuke Kimura and Matt Pickens.  The Rapids now have only two draft picks in camp, GK Thomas Olsen (who's path to a roster spot was presumably blocked with the acquisition of Dykstra) and F Niki Jackson, who will feature later in this post.

Today the Rapids announced they had loaned Miked Da Fonte to Phoenix Rising FC of the USL.  The Rapids announced when they made their year-end roster moves that Da Fonte would be loaned out for 2018, the last year of his contract, so I'm going to remove him from the roster list now as while on loan he doesn't count against roster or salary caps.  Its safe to say we've seen the last of him in Colorado.

Now, on to the games.  I actually never got around to writing up last weekend's scrimmage with the KC, so lets start there.  These lineups are my best guesses at formation based on the box scores:

The starting XI:

KC scored twice on this lineup in the first half.  The second half lineup looked like:

Winn would get the last 15 minutes of the game.  This lineup played a scoreless half.

After a quick trip back to Colorado to pick up some new players and do laundry the team was back in Arizona for a game against UPSL side Sporting AZ yesterday.  The starting group:

Good to see signings Price and Smith with the team now.  This group would go 60 minutes and score twice, first from Castillo in the opening 2 minutes and then McBean got one 25 minutes in.  At the 60th minute mark the whole lineup swapped out for this group:

This group would also play 60 minutes (for a total of 120) and they ran rampant over the lower league side, as you would expect.  Calvert, Aigner, and Perez all got goals and Blomberg and Jackson each got 2, for a final score of 9-0.  Hard to draw a whole lot from a game against that level of competition but the team did what it was expected to do, so that's a good thing.

The next match is Wednesday against Phoenix Rising FC (now featuring Mike Da Fonte!) at 6pm and it will be streamed online, if you don't have Valentines Day plans and you're not watching the Olympics.

Signed Players:
* = international
HG = homegrown
DP = designated player

GK Andrew Dykstra
GK Tm Howard - DP
GK Zac MacMath
D Edgar Castillo
D Kip Colvey
D Kortne Ford - HG
D Marlon Hairston
D Eric Miller
D Axel Sjoberg
D Tommy Smith*
D Jared Watts
D Danny Wilson*
D Deklan Wynne*
M Bismark Adjei-Boateng*
M Stefan Aigner*
M Michael Azira
M Johan Blomberg*
M Shkelzen Gashi* - DP
M Sam Hamilton
M Ricardo Perez - HG
M Jack Price*
M Dillon Serna - HG
F Dominique Badji*
F Caleb Calvert - HG
F Jack McBean

Unsigned Draftees:
GK Thomas Olsen
F Niki Jackson

Trialists:
D Joel Johnson
M Enzo Martinez