Last week the Rapids announced contract extensions for Auston Trusty and Jonathan Lewis. Trusty is now signed through 2023 and Lewis through 2024. Combined with the extension given Abubakar last week the Colorado is getting as much of their young core under long-term contracts as they can.
No other roster news so far, the team passed on the Re-Entry draft (both phases). They did put out some promotion of Academy striker Darren Yapi, my gut tells me he'll be signed to a homegrown contract before the season starts.
Today Colorado announced they signed CB Lalas Abubakar to a contract extension. He'll now be with the club through 2024, with a team option for 2025. That would make him a Rapid during the best years of his career (26-31 years old). If he continues to be a regular starter that whole time that would make him one of the longest serving Rapids of all-time, getting him near 200 starts and appearances.
Also the team lost nobody to Austin in the expansion draft today.
Lots of news in the last 24 hours. The biggest is that the Rapids announced their end of season roster moves, something that the fans had been waiting on for the last week or so. In short:
Austin FC is starting play in 2021, which means sometime this month (probably, maybe after the holidays) there will be an expansion draft. So far there's been no report that the draft will differ in any significant way from the last couple of expansion drafts. What that means is that the Rapids will likely be able to protect 12 players, their homegrown players 25 years old or younger (which is all of them) will be automatically protected on top of that, and they can't lose any more than 1 player to Austin.
Given that, lets try to figure out the best protected list.
First, here are the automatically protected homegrown players:
Kellyn Acosta (his homegrown status with Dallas transferred to Colorado), Seb Anderson, Cole 'Goal' Bassett, Kortne Ford, Matt Hundley, Abe Rodriguez, Sam Vines, Will Vint
So after that group we have 12 other players we can protect. First I'm going to go through the super-obvious ones that need no explanation:
Lalas Abubakar, Braian Galvan, Jonathan Lewis, Younes Namli, Jack Price, Keegan Rosenberry, Diego Rubio, and Andre Shinyashiki
So that leaves 4. To me the next two are equally obvious but may need some explanation:
Auston Trusty - We spent a lot to get him and I think (and I'm sure the coaching staff thinks) he's still the likely starter next to Abubakar in the future. He's worth way too much to let him get picked.
William Yarbrough - The Denver Post reported that we are working on bringing him back, and we know that almost every loan into MLS includes a buy clause. The only questions are "Do the Rapids want to pay that much or are they going to try to renegotiate lower?" and if they are going to pay that much "Will Liga MX try to screw MLS on a buy clause again (see Castillo, Edgar)?". Regardless we own his MLS right now and Austin could pick those rights up if we don't protect Yarbrough. I think the risk of him getting picked is bigger than the reward of protecting somebody else.
That leaves the final two spots. I could make a case for up to 5 players for those two slots, but I think they'll go with the two Nicolas, Benezet and Mezquida. Benezet has a good amount of TAM invested in him and if he can get healthy is a likely starter. Mezquida would be a nice young pickup for an expansion team and would be at risk of being picked.
The other three I thought about protecting were Clint Irwin, but I'm not sure Austin FC is going to want to use a pick on a guy who isn't a sure fire day one starter in goal, Drew Moor, but as valuable as his veteran leadership would be there's probably a real risk of Moor saying "I'm not interested in moving to Austin, I'm retiring" which would waste the pick for Austin, and Jeremy Kelly, who probably didn't show enough to be worth one of Austin's five picks but could be at risk in this scenario.
Assuming that Benezet and Mezquida are protected, that would leave the following unprotected:
Steven Beitashour, Clint Irwin, Niki Jackson, Jeremy Kelly, Drew Moor, Andre Rawls, Abdul Rwatubaye, Collen Warner, Danny Wilson, and Deklan Wynne
I would be willing to bet that Austin passes on that whole group, but if they pick somebody it would likely be Irwin or Kelly.
Lets go through the annual roster break down and see who should stay and who should go:
Goalkeepers:
Keep: Abe Rodriguez - I mean, obviously. He probably needs another year in the Springs but he is the future
Buy: William Yarbrough - The Denver Post reported the Rapids are already working on this, but he's solid and should be the starter going into 2021
Replace: Clint Irwin and Andre Rawls - Irwin will probably want to go somewhere he can compete for minutes, here he'll be a backup. Rawls is in the same boat. If one of them wants to stay as Yarbrough's backup and we don't want to invest time/money in anyone better that's fine, but we don't need both of them
Defenders:
Keep: Lalas Abubakar, Seb Anderson, Keegan Rosenberry, Auston Trusty, Sam Vines - These should be fairly obvious. Three regular starters, a homegrown, and a young player we invested a lot in
Pick-up option: Jeremy Kelly - Good rookie season, still cheap
Re-sign: Drew Moor - Its really up to Drew if he wants to keep playing, but if he does we should give him a contract. Veteran experience and loyalty to an all-time team great
Replace: Steven Beitashour, Danny Wilson, Deklan Wynne - Two guys who got 0 playing time in 2020 and one guy who's overpaid and takes an international slot. We can do better
Coach's Decision: Kortne Ford, Abdul Rwatubaye - For Ford he's 2 years from being a MLS player and I doubt he still has MLS level skill at this point, but if the coaches think he can contribute then bring him back. Rwatubaye is an unknown to me
Midfielders:
Keep: Kellyn Acosta, Cole 'Goal' Bassett, Braian Galvan, Younes Namli, Jack Price, Will Vint - Five guys who were big contributors or showed flashes of being a big contributor, and a homegrown player. Easy choices
Sell/Trade: Nicolas Mezquida - A solid squad player but if we can get value for him and free up his international slot, that might be the best move
Replace: Collen Warner - We can do better, in fact DM may be a place we want to invest
Forwards:
Keep: Nicolas Benezet, Jonathan Lewis - Obviously we keep Lewis. I'm not thrilled with Benezet's availability this season but he has obvious quality. Given his contract situation I think we give him another year
Pick-up option: Andre Shinyashiki - Also obviously
Sell/Trade: Diego Rubio - He's not the number 9 we need and I expect the club to invest on a major player to play the 1 in the 5-4-1. Rubio has value, we should cash that in
Replace: Niki Jackson - Too many better options on this team
Coach's Decision: Matt Hundley - As a homegrown he's probably going to stick around, but I have no idea
So 7 players that should be allowed to walk away, and another 2 we should try to move for value. 3 more that are unknowns to me. 12 is actually a higher number than I expected going into the offseason. I think I'm likely being too harsh on some players (like Jackson and Rawls). I doubt we see that many players replaced.
As always at the end of the season its time for me to own up to my predictions and see how I did. Even with the craziness of 2020, I still have to take my medicine.
- Rapids finish in 5th or 6th, but lose their first playoff game on the road
Ding, ding, ding, nailed it. 5th place finish, loss to Minnesota in our first playoff game, in Minnesota.
- Colorado looks like they re finally taking the USOC seriously, but don't make a deep run
I'm taking a N/A on this one, since the USOC didn't get played this year due to COVID
- We bring the Rocky Mountain Cup home
We pulled this off. I can't say I saw a 3 goal deficit being overcome by a 5 goal win on the road, but we did get it back
- Kamara fades at the end of the season but still finishes with the Golden Boot
Well I missed on this, though not as badly as you would think. Kei had 3 goals, our co-Golden Boots had 5
- Namli is the team MVP
Close, I think he was second. Bassett was the MVP though
- Vines is the defensive player of the year
Yep
- The Rapids make an unexpected major move in the summer window, either a notable player leaves or a significant signing (or both)
I'd call trading away last year's Golden Boot counts
- Galvan arrives in the summer and doesn't contribute immediately but shows why we invested in him with promise for 2021 and beyond
I'm calling this correct. While Galvan did have a couple of good appearances he's not a starter. But he toes have talent
- Yarborough is signed after his loan and is expected to be the starter going into 2021
This is incomplete so far, but the Denver Post reported yesterday that we are pursuing buying him
- Nicholson doesn't finish the season in Colorado
Told ya ;)
- At least one Rapids home game is played behind closed doors or postponed due to coronavirus
The only miss here is that I significantly underestimated the impact of COVID-19. When I wrote this on March 6th Colorado had just confirmed its 8th case and the country had a total of 282 cases. At that time I was still thinking that things were going to get bad but maybe not to the point of full life disruption. If only we knew what was coming.
11 predictions. 7 right, 2 wrong, 1 incomplete, and 1 N/A. That's notably better than I normally do.
I have real concerns with the tactical approach to this game. Apparently Sam Vines was fighting a hamstring issue all week and the Rapids had to plan for the possibility, and eventual reality, that he'd miss his first start of the season. The plan was apparently to drag Acosta out of position and place him at left back. This despite having Deklan Wynne and Jeremy Kelly, both of whom are capable of playing LB (its Wynne's natural position) on the roster and signing Steven Beitashour mid-season specifically to back up Sam Vines! When asked after the game Fraser said he didn't think it was fair to throw Beitashour in there for his first game time in a playoff game after more than a year off. Dine, but then why didn't Fraser get Beitashour some playing time during the season if that was a concern? And that still doesn't explain why Acosta was chosen over Kelly or Wynne.
Not that Acosta was bad or to blame or anything in his efforts at left back. You'll see at the end of this that I named him the man of the match. But having Acosta at LB took him away from the area where he was more valuable. Combined with rather off games from Price and Namli the center of the pitch was wide open to Minnesota and they regularly took advantage of it. Honestly Minnesota could have had another goal or two given the chances we gave them.
Maybe this game turns out different if in the first 10-15 minutes of each half, when we were really pushing and looked dangerous we scored. Going up 1-0, or tying the game at 1-1 would have given us confidence and might have kept us in that aggressive posture. Instead on both halves we regressed to looking like a young team getting their first playoff experience. Combine that with some poor play from Wilson, Lewis, and Rubio and we never felt like we were going to turn it around after the initial surge.
We'll get into the offseason discussion more in coming weeks (but probably not until next week, given Thanksgiving) but this game showed how much the Rapids need to go out and get a top quality #9 this season. Its great that anyone on the team can score, but its a problem when you can't lean on anyone with an expectation to score. Rubio showed he can't carry the team as a 9 last night. We need somebody in the Conor Casey mold (not in style of play, but in reliability and consistency).
Man of the Match: Kellyn Acosta. Asked to play out of position and did it well. And given how many of his teammates had off games, not having an off game when out of position says something.
There was a lot of talk going into the international break that teams would be missing players due to having to quarantine after returning from international duty. Specifically for the Rapids Diego Rubio was called up by Chile. We found out this week that shortly into his time with Chile he came into general, but not close, contact with a person who tested positive for COVID and the decision was made then to have him return to Colorado to go through quarantine. He's been training by himself in that time but he is available tomorrow (and I think he joined the team for training for the last day or two).
Minnesota had multiple players going on international duty, including former Rapids striker Kei Kamara, and on top of their injuries they were going to be very thin tomorrow. MLS apparently realized that having so many players missing in the playoffs, for all playoff teams, was a bad look for the league and they arranged charters home for as many players as they could, which greatly reduced the required quarantine time. As far as I know all of Minnesota's players were included so nobody on either side will be in quarantine for this game. The Rapids were probably better off had MLS not done that, but I understand why the league made that decision. And there's still an advantage to the Rapids having not travelled in the last week while Minnesota's players are recovering from some long flights, such as Kamara returning from Sierra Leone.
Both Rapids goals were remarkably similar. Both came from long runs out of midfield down the left side that went completely unchecked (you can see why Houston wasn't in the playoff race). For the first Namli played a pass to Shinyashiki who had his shot parried, but directly back into Namli's path who put it away. For the second Rubio broke the goalkeeper's ankles cutting inside and curled the ball home for the late winner. In neither case did the Dynamo defense even bother either player.
The Dynamo goal was just a bit of bad luck more than anything. After a poor clearance by Yarbrough the ball came back into the box. Rosenberry made a successful interception of a pass but the ball fell right into a gap between him and Abubakar where the Dynamo forward was waiting. Despite that Yarbrough had the shot covered but a slight touch as it went back Abubakar deflected it just enough to go between Yarbrough's legs. Band bounces all around.
With the win the Rapids finished the regular season 5th in the West. This despite the on-going battle with COVID that stopped the season three different times. Starting the year, what feels like a decade ago, I thought the Rapids needed to win a home playoff game in order to achieve the standard they set for themselves with their talk in the last 3 years. That would have required a 4th place finish. I'm willing to say 5th is good enough given the COVID difficulties and their success in the youth movement, plus winning back the Rocky Mountain Cup. Topping it off with a playoff win a week from Sunday would really show that we've improved but even without it I think the team is in a good place. We'll get more into that in the offseason.
Man of the Match: William Yarbrough. Yeah, his clearance on the Dynamo goal wasn't great but otherwise he had another strong game. Its not often he gets beat due to positioning, it takes a quality shot to get by him. He showed that again in this game.
I expect Fraser to go for the win tomorrow with the lineup, especially with there being two weeks off before the playoffs due to the international break. There may be a player or two who need a rest, but otherwise we're going to see pretty close to the lineup we saw against Seattle and Portland. Maybe Irwin starts in front of Yarbrough, but I doubt it. Rosenberry, Abubakar, and Vines will likely start on the back line with either Wilson or Trusty. Midfield will probably be Price, Acosta, Bassett, Namli, and Shinyashiki, but Lewis might get a start, and Rubio will be up front.
Prediction: 1-0 win, goal by Bassett. Houston is not very good and has nothing to play for, and the Rapids are clicking. Goal Bassett gets his 7th and wins the team Golden Boot to go along with a probable team MVP award. The Rapids finish 5th and get the Dallas-Minnesota winner in the first round (Dallas if that game ends up a draw).
The one point of excitement was early in the first half when Portland was called for a PK that was overturned on VAR. The ball was played by the Portland defender and it spring up and clearly hit his arm in the box. Clear PK, right? No. The most recent change in the handling rules clarified that an accidental touch on the arm after a defender plays the ball isn't automatically a PK. If the defender is making himself unnaturally bigger it is a PK. You could certainly argue that it applied in this case, but its a judgement call.
Other than that the primary highlight was Acosta's goal. Rubio picked a Timbers' pocket in midfield, brought it towards goal, fed Namli in a give and go, then dumped it the other way to Acosta who sidestepped a defender and hammered it home. Another good bit of ball work and a nice team goal.
So with the win the Rapids clinched a playoff spot. Depending on what happens on Sunday the could finish anywhere form 5th to 8th (we can't get to 4th because Minnesota and Dallas play each other) which means we'll be on the road for the first playoff game. Its just a matter of who we play. If we win on Sunday we're also guaranteed to have more points than any of the teams that miss the playoffs. We would also have enough points to have made the playoffs even if all our cancelled games had been credited as a forfeit by a 3-0 scoreline (the standard for FIFA forfeits),
Man of the Match: Kellyn Acosta. Yeah, it was the easy choice. But everyone played a solid game so the one thing that stood out was the goal.
Prediction: 1-1 draw, goal by Bassett. Portland has slightly better offenses and defenses but not by much and they're injured. Plus while they would love to strengthen their hold on first place that doesn't have quite the same urgency as the Rapids will have trying to clinch their first playoff spot in 4 years. I think that's enough for the teams to battle to a draw. Worst case, if the Rapids lose, I think the Sounders get a result in LA anyway and we still clinch tomorrow night.
With the win the road to the playoffs becomes much clearer, and easier. The Rapids clinch a playoff berth in a number of ways. The Rapids are in if:
OR
OR
Right now of the teams who have not clinched a playoff spot in the West the Rapids have the best chance to clinch a spot. It would be nice to win both games though which would give us more points than at least 4 other Western teams and shut up the whiners who think its unfair that the Rapids are going to "sneak" into the playoffs on PPG after not playing 5 games.
Coming back to last nights game the Rapids had three very different quality goals. The first was a great team goal where Vines and Benezet played a give and go into the corner. Vines then placed a nice chip in front of goal for Shinyashiki to head home. Frenchman to American homegrown to Brazilian for the lead.
After a defensive breakdown (Rosenberry somehow left Morris unmarked at the top of the 6) the Rapids re-took the lead just before half. A Jack Price corner was cleared to the top of the arc where Keegan Rosenberry hit it solid and true, ripping the ball into the corner of the net to take a lead to the halftime locker room. Not the type of shot you expect from a right back.
The second half started out fairly even but Seattle started to wear out and the Rapids took more and more control. Still it didn't seem like a 2-1 scoreline was likely to hold up, and technically it didn't. With 15 minutes to play Jack Price lined up for a free kick and put it right in front of the net where Goal (we call him Goal now) Bassett headed it home for his 5th goal of the season, tying Lewis for the team lead again. Price's assist on the play broke the tie for the team lead with Bassett. Any air went out of the Sounders at that point and a surprise win was wrapped up for Colorado.
Its really hard to point out anyone who had a poor game. There were lapses here and there but really the only negative was Rubio being too selfish multiple times. I understand strikers are naturally a bit selfish, it's part of their game, but there were 2-3 times Rubio passed up what should have been a great attempt at goal for one of his teammates to hold the ball to try to find a harder shot for himself. He's got to know when to be selfish and when to lay it off.
Man of the Match: Nicholas Benezet. His first start since the MLS Is Back tournament and again you can see the skill that we signed him for. He was putting the ball into dangerous situations all night ans had the secondary assist on the first goal. If he can stay healthy and play like this he can force himself into the starting XI next season. But he's got to do that to be worth his salary, he can't be coming off the bench most of the season.
In October of 2013 I flipped the coin before the Rapids home match against Seattle. The Sounders won the toss, the only thing they won that night. Deshorn Brown would score 13 seconds after kickoff on the way to a 5-1 win. We need something like that tonight. The Rapids have a slight chance to clinch a playoff spot tonight with a win and Portland getting at least a point, and LA and FSL drawing. Even a point tonight would be huge for Colorado's playoff chances. A loss and we have to be very concerned that we could miss out. Kickoff tonight is at 7pm and its our last home game of the year.
Again, between COIVD, the lack of an injury report, and out packed schedule I'm not going to make a lineup prediction, though I expect Fraser to stick close to what was working in Minnesota on Wednesday. A concerning note, Minnesota's game today was cancelled due to COVID positives in their team, which apparently includes a player that played against the Rapids on Wednesday. So, not good.
Prediction: 2-1 loss, goal by Bassett. I really wanted to predict a draw but Seattle's defense is really good and ours is not. I don't think they'll shut us out but I can't see us hanging with them, unfortunately.
Colorado heads to Minnesota (not Canada) tomorrow for a game against the fifth placed Union. The Rapids are hoping for a quick bounce back from the mess in KC over the weekend. One interesting note that was revealed today is that there was a "gentleman's agreement" as part of the trade sending Kei Kamara to Minnesota that stated he won't play in tomorrow's game against the Rapids. That's a helpful piece of work from the FO. The Union is pushing for a top 4 finish in PPG (they are also not going to get to 23 games) so they'll be pushing hard for 3 points. Kickoff is at 6pm tomorrow.
I'm still not going to predict a lineup given the unknowns around the team. We found out today that Acosta is nursing an injury and Warner got a bit banged up in Saturday's game, so we might see something like Danny Wilson paired up with Jack Price, or we might go with just one DM and push forward more in the attack.
Prediction: 1-1 draw, goal by Namli. The lack of Kamara won't leave the Union with many attacking options but they still have a good defense. The Rapids are going to want to show they're better than what we saw on Saturday. With the short rest for both teams I think we see a somewhat dull draw.
This was a game that matched up a team at the top of the Western Conference with a team that hadn't played in a month, and it looked like it. KC was sharper, faster, and more fit. The Rapids were on their heels all night. Colorado didn't get its first shot until about the 80th minute, by that time they were down 2-0. Credit to the Rapids for getting to halftime 0-0 but once the dam burst in the 54th minute it was all over.
This year the Rapids seem to be hot and cold. Either they're ripping through teams or they're getting hammered. In 14 games they've played 7 that have been decided by 2 goals or more. With 4 draws that means they've only played 3 games that were won or lost by 1 goal. The last one of those was the SKC game at the MLS Is Back tournament. The Rapids need to figure out how to keep deficits ton one goal so they can turn game around.
Its a short rest for the team as they head out to Minnesota for Wednesday's night match. To make a playoff push they really need a draw up north. they have one home game left on Sunday, which the team just announced will not include fans. Hopefully by March 2021 we can get back out to the Dick.
Man of the Match: William Yarbrough. I know, it seems odd to pick the goalkeeper as the best player in a 4-0 blowout loss, but Yarbrough was really on Saturday night. The rest of the team couldn't keep any pressure off him though, facing 23 shots (12 on target). A couple of great saves kept the score lower than it could have been.
Hey, looks like the Rapids are actually going to get to play again this season! There have been no new reports of positive COVID tests out of Commerce City and the team is set to fly to KC tomorrow morning for their game. All players have returned from any COVID isolation and, barring any other injuries, will be available tomorrow. Kickoff is at 6:30pm and one thing that wasn't fixed during the month down-time is the TV situation. Unless you have DirecTV or are outside of Altitude's broadcast area you still won't have access to the game through normal means.
Normally I project a starting lineup and a score but I really have no idea what we're going to see tomorrow. We're a month from game fitness with limited training in that time. Fraser is going to have to pick whomever has 90 minutes in the, and has looked good in the few training sessions they've had. Hopefully the team will be mentally strong enough to put in a good effort but its going to be hard to blame them if they look fatigued and rusty.
Currently Colorado has 5 games left on the schedule. They have missed the last 7 games, but the most recent game they missed was a reschedule of the first game they missed, so they're only 6 games behind. The fourth of the five remaining games is the rescheduled game from the second game they missed, so if they play all 5 of the remaining games they'll be 5 games behind. It appears that MLS is likely to call that good enough and use average points per game (PPG) to determine the playoff spots. Going off of past seasons and where the 8th placed team ended up you're looking at 1.3 PPG being the likely threshold for the playoffs this year if that's what the league does. The Rapids need 5 points in these 5 games to be at 1.3 PPG for the season.
EDIT: Literally as I pushed publish on this the Rapids announced the next 3 games have been postponed. That's this Wednesday, this Sunday, a nd next Wednesday. Needless to say, for all intents and purposes, the season is over.
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So I took a week or so off to go visit family, came back, and missed no games. Yeah, must be 2020.
As everyone reading already knows the LAFC and LA Galaxy games last week were postponed due to further positive COVID tests in the Rapids organization. (Minn-Dallas, and Columbus-Orlando were also postponed this week). The Atlantic reported today that the team did train today, but with less than half the lineup, and there are serious questions about Wednesday's game in Seattle going forward.
The Atlantic also reported that after a staffer tested positive last Tuesday, leading to Wednesday's game being postponed, the team trained on Wednesday. They felt that since it was a staffer and not a player who tested positive it was safe to train. Until a player tested positive on Thursday, which means everyone who was at the training on Wednesday had to go into quarantine.
At this point its going to be really hard to judge the 2020 season. Its now a mess for the Rapids. Play 2 games, take 3 months off. Play 3 games, take a month off. Play 8 games, take a month off. Play somewhere between 5-10 games in a month to finish the season. I've been pretty vocal about the FO needing to put up or shut up in 2020 after all their talk building to this season, and up until now I haven't seen COVID as much of a excuse, because very team was dealing with it. But not every team is dealing with an outbreak like the Rapids.
Before this outbreak the Rapids were pretty close to my bar going into the season. My expectation to say that the "Rapids Way" play worked was to win a home playoff game. Getting a home playoff game, in a regular season, requires finishing in the top 4 or having a couple of upsets in the playoffs. The Rapids were in 5th when the outbreak started. They also won the Rocky Mountain Cup back in spectacular fashion (admittedly, because we put ourselves in a pretty big hole) and we're seeing the youth movement starting to come to fruition. That's enough for me to give the leadership (Smith, Fraser, etc.) most of a pass on 2020.
I do have some expectations that need to be met for the rest of the season though. One, we need to figure out why we can't get this outbreak under control. Are we taking the right precautions and listening to the experts and its just not working? Or are we ignoring best practices? Because based on what little is in the Atlantic report training last week seems pretty stupid from my POV. If we find out that the organization has been lax on handling COVID and that's what put us in this situation that would be a pretty big black mark against those involved. But if the organization has been doing the right thing and it hasn't worked, or individuals haven't been following the organization's process then that's a different issue.
Secondly whatever games we do play need to be played well. Given the situation I'm not real concerned about results (but beat FSL if that game gets played, please) but I don't want to see the team giving up or reverting to poor form. We're going to be rusty and we're going to play a lot of games in a short time frame, so I expect that we're not going to win at the rate I expected, but there's a difference between not being in form and not playing well. I'm ok with the former, not the latter.
Today the Rapids announced that the SKC match will be made up on Wednesday October 2st at 7pm, as expected. Fans will be allowed to attend the rescheduled match, with ticket info coming shortly.
There were also two tweets about the situation today from outside sources. First Jake Shapiro at the Denver Post tweeted that some of the Rapids players/staff who have tested positive are showing mild symptoms. Obviously we with them all the best and hope for their quick recovery. Second Sam Stejskal at the Athletic tweeted that another 2 players and another staff member has tested positive, brining the totals to 4 players and 10 staff members. This latest report has not yet been confirmed by the team. Sam also stated that the earliest the team will be able to train is Friday, and only if everyone continues to test negative.
The Rapids are scheduled to leave Saturday morning for their game in Portland Saturday night, which at this point is still on. I don't see how that game gets played. We know that the 14 positive members of the organization pretty much have no chance of making that trip, and the rest of the players won't have trained in a week at best. Even if there's enough players to field a team, with 10 staff members missing is there enough coaches, trainers, equipment staff, and administrators to actually have a game? I have my doubts. I expect that tomorrow or Friday we'll hear the game is off. The game will then be rescheduled for Wednesday November 5th.
What that means is that starting next Wednesday the team will play every Wednesday and every weekend until Decision Day on November 8th. No breaks, a game every 3-4 days. It also means that if the team isn't able to play LAFC at home next Wednesday there is no place on the schedule to make the game up. Either the league will have to extend the season to allow us to make up the game, or the game will go un-played. I doubt the league would force us to forfeit. If you look at the schedules right now, the Sounders-Galaxy game that was scheduled for the night the players refused to play in support of the protests in Kenosha is not on the schedule to be made up (unlike the Colorado-Dallas game which we already made up). I have heard that the only way that game will be made up is if it has a impact on the playoff picture. I expect the same thing would apply to any game the Rapids may not be able to make up due to this outbreak.
Tomorrow night's home game against SKC is off after a Rapids player and three Rapids staff members tested positive for COVID-19 during the most recent round of tests performed on Thursday and Friday. A date for a reschedule will be determined at a later time.
Once again it was the young guys, Bassett, Lewis, Shinyashiki, and Mezquida being the old guy at 28. Assists from Price (twice), Acosta, Trusty, and Bassett continued the youth movement. There was also an own goal forced by a good pass from Shinyashiki and pressure from Bassett. Lewis now leads the team Golden Boot race with 5, with Bassett one behind him, and Bassett and Price are tied for the assist lead at 4. Bassett has had 4 goals and 3 assists in the last 7 games.
Really there's not a whole lot to break down on this one, because the teams were on two different levels. Hard to say anyone on Colorado played poorly or that anyone on San Jose played well. The biggest concerns for the Rapids are injury related, with both Namli and Wilson missing the game. Hopefully they were just being smart and giving them a full week to recover before SKC on Sunday.
Man of the Match: Jack Price. There were a number of choices, including Bassett, but Price was dealing last night, putting ball after ball into dangerous areas, and only a couple of good saves from the SJ keeper kept him form having more than two assists.
The scores of the last 6 games the Earthquakes have played have been 1-5, 1-1, 1-7, 0-0, 1-1, and 1-6. That's 5 goals for San Jose and 20 against. One of those 1-1 score lines was our game in San Jose. Almeyda has the Quakes playing a man marking system they're not up to playing and they're getting run. The Rapids need to add to their misery tomorrow. Play our fittest, fastest guys and make them work at altitude. Kickoff is at 7pm and yes, still on Altitude.
This assumes Wilson's and Namli's knocks they picked up this weekend are enough to keep them from starting tomorrow. If they're able to go Wilson goes in for Moor and Namli for Lewis, with Shinyashiki moving to the left. Expect us to play an un-tempo high-press game as we try to beat the Quakes man-making system and run them out of gas at elevation.
Prediction: 3-1 win, goals by Bassett, Rubio, and Lewis. I think, even on short rest, the Rapids can punish San Jose at home. While they hang in for a while, getting a goal to keep things interesting, we put it away with a late goal.
MLS released the last of the regular season schedule today, getting us to 23 games before the playoffs start. In addition to the San Jose and KC games this week the Rapids will play Portland (A), LAFC (H), Galaxy (H), Seattle (H, A), KC (A), Minnesota (A), and Houston (A), We also host FSL again. To be very clear, the Rocky Mountain Cup is done for 2020, this upcoming game will not count towards it.
So over the 23 game season we'll have played DC, Orlando, FSL (4 times), SKC (4 times), Minnesota (2 times), San Jose (2 times), Houston (2 times), Dallas, the Galaxy (2 times), Portland, LAFC, and Seattle (2 times). We won't play Vancouver at all, or anyone in the East outside of our opening two games. The lack of Vancouver is surprising, I'm assuming that since they're only in the States for 12 games and sharing a stadium with Portland the scheduling just didn't work out.
Look, there's nothing "fair" about this season. Some teams are going to get screwed on the scheduling. All we can do is make it work for us. At the moment, leaving out the first two games, we'll have gotten 9 of 21 games against the bottom 4 teams in the division. That's 42% of our games against the lower 36% of the table. So we did pretty good. The downside is that only 4 of those games remain, the other 7 are against teams also currently in a playoff spot. We also have 6 of the last 11 at home, but that will flip to 4 of 9 after this week.
We can make the playoffs with this schedule, we should make the playoffs with this schedule, but we have to pick up at least 4 and preferably 6 points this week.
The big takeaway from this game is that the kids are alright. After Kamara's departure the 'old man' in the starting XI was goalkeeper William Yarbrough...at 31. Everyone else was 27 or younger. Mezquida (28) and Benezet (29) brought the average age of the players who appeared up a bit but still pretty young. The age of the players who ended up on the boxscore (goals or assists) was 19, 19, 21, 23 and 23. That looks good. Right now the Rapids only have 5 players over the age of 29 on the roster, 4 of which (Irwin, Moor, Beitashour, and Warner) are pretty clearly backups at this point, with only Yarbrough likely to get significant minutes if anyone is available.
We've talked a lot about the attack, but credit goes to the defense as well. Rosenberry had Pavon locked down all night. That let Abubakar and Wilson really focus on the center of the field and keep anything from getting too dangerous. And the few times they weren't able to do that Yarbrough was up to the task. The only real negative from the game was injuries, both Wilson and Namli left after taking knocks. We'll have to see what their availability is for the next couple of games this week.
BTW I said the VAR ruling was favorable earlier. Not because it was a questionable call, but because the offside that was overturned was very close and VAR in MLS doesn't use the Hawkeye line-drawing system you see in the EPL, so the VAR is still eyeballing it from a screen. The player that held Galvan onside was far enough away from him that it entered into a grey area of being a clearly wrong call that should have been reviewed, since its not obvious it was that close. So the favorable call was that they agreed to review it, not that they made a favorable decision. Given how the game was going though I don't think it changed the outcome of the match.
Man of the Match: Cole Bassett. Had the most shots on the team, a goal, and honestly, I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to name him MotM. I don't think he's going anywhere this year, but I'm not 100% he'll be around when we start the 2021 season. European teams have to be sniffing around at this point. If it weren't for Lewis' goal Bassett would be tied for the team lead in goals and the team lead in assists.
With the news tonight I don't have it in me to do a normal game preview. Kickoff is at 8:30pm in LA and TV is still screwed. Oh, and we're going to lose.
Vote. Vote like your life depends on it. Because even if yours doesn't, odds are a family member's, friend's, coworker's, or employee's does.
A couple of reported but not announced roster moves by the Rapids today. The big one is that we've sent Kamara to Minnesota for a reported $150K in allocation money and United's 2nd round pick in 2022.
Obviously trading the best scorer in the last decade is a big move for the Rapids, but the comments Robun Fraser made after the trade suggests something was not right between Kamara and the locker room and/or coaches. Fraser said "it was evident that it was time for a move" and some rumors suggest that Kamara was demanding to start the rest of the season post-MLS Is Back tournament. Now both the Rapids and Kamara have histories of problems in the player/club relationship. The list of players the Rapids have left go that later came out were unhappy is long, and Kamara has played for 10 teams before today and only once has he made it past 2 years with a team. I doubt we'll ever get a real good feel for what happened here, but suffice it to say its quite likely that things weren't good and a change needed to be made.
The other piece of this puzzle is that Kamara's contract is expiring and only has 12 games left on it. If he wasn't likely to start as the rumors suggest and recent games have shown, how much playing time was Kamara going to get in those 12 games? Would that playing time have made the difference in this season being successful? It seems unlikely. He isn't even making a strong case to start, while his numbers are better than Shinyashiki the rest of the attacking players are all putting up numbers similar to his.
So we have a possibly unhappy player that isn't likely to turn this season around and isn't an obvious starter. Trading him is a logical step then. Of course all those things also impact what we can get for him, driving down his price. Despite that I would have liked to see us do a bit better than $125K in allocation money and a draft pick that we're likely to get no value out of. Kamara is the 5th leading goal scorer in MLS history and has been successful wherever he's gone, at least in the first season. I was really hoping to see us hit 200K at least. In the end this is a pretty meh trade where we dump salary and potentially a problem player and get some value out of him, but doesn't help us greatly short or long term.
The other reported news just broke but the team has apparently signed 33 year old free agent fullback Steven Beitashour. He's spent the last 10 years playing for San Jose, Toronto (where he was coached by Fraser), Vancouver, and LAFC and represented Iran at the 2014 World Cup, though didn't get any playing time. This is a solid backup signing, giving some experience to the outside of the defense and somebody reliable when Rosenberry or (more likely) Vines needs a night off. But that's all it is.
The first half had some similarities to the Houston game, as a fan in the Facebook discussion pointed out. Colorado had good control of the match, made some chances, but couldn't finish. And much like the Houston game Dallas got a goal against the run of play to take a lead into the locker room.
The second half was a lot like the first FSL game, where we just folded. Dallas got two goals in the first 15 minutes of the half and that was the game. Shinyashiki got one back for the Rapids, giving fans slight hope, but Dallas closed that door with another goal about 15 minutes after it. Colorad outshot Dallas 22-15, but Dallas had the edge in shots on target 7-5.This game featured a new core in defense. with Trusty and Moor starting in front of Irwin in net. It didn't work. A number of fans have suggested Trusty should be starting over Wilson and/or Irwin should be seeing more time. Last night t hey showed why they weren't getting much playing time. Irwin was slow to react and had questionable positioning, while Trusty didn't add much either on defense or going forward.
Not that they were only to blame. They didn't get much help from the midfield in front of them. Somehow Jack Price, who carries a reputation for a bit of a harsh tackle, didn't get called for a single foul all night. I don't remember the ref swallowing his whistle either. For whatever reason Price was standing off far too much last night, and Acosta wasn't doing much better. Meanwhile in the attack Namli had the quietest night we've seen so far and Lewis was ineffectual as a starter. He is much better as a super sub off the bench where he can use all his energy in a limited time than trying to pace himself for 90 minutes.
Its off to LA to face the Galaxy on Saturday, then home to see KC and SJ. We need a win and two draws or two wins to stay in the playoff hunt. We need to win all three if we're going to live up to the "Rapids Way" mentality we were promised in 2020, but at this point, at the middle of the rearranged season of 23 games, its pretty clear we're not getting that.
Man of the Match: Andre Shinyahiki. Yeah, I took the easy route on this one and picked the goal scorer.
Even though this is the middle of our 7 games in just over 3 weeks I think Fraser is going to want to keep things a similar as he can given the success on Saturday. Lewis for Shinyashiki might be the only change, though I expect liberal subbing in the second half like we saw on Saturday. Otherwise I think we'll ride the success as long as we can.
Prediction: 1-1 draw, goal by Kamara. Dallas has a good defense but a meh offense. Outside of Saturday our offense is pretty similar to theirs. We've got tome confidence now, so I think we can score one, but not more than that. It will be late and probably off of Kei's head.
Yeah, I never saw that coming. In one of the great Rapids regular season games of all-time the burgundy boys went into Sandy, Utah and ran the locals out of town. Then they took our Cup back and came home. Just a few of the historic stats from Saturday night:
This is a bit of a mixed lineup but I'm getting the feeling Fraser is modifying his strategy this year towards something more like this formation, with only one d-mid type player and two central midfielders in front of him. Based on their availability on Wednesday night I'm guessing/hoping that Kamara and Benezet are available to start. Warner seems to play the true 6 better than Price has. And the back 4 is the one Fraser has preferred in recent games.
Prediction: 2-1 loss, goal by Namli. Its really hard to expect anything but a loss in this game, given how badly they beat us a couple of weeks ago and our long track record of failure in Sandy. Even a 1-1 draw seems crazily optimistic right now. its been a long time since I predicted a loss in an RMC game, but I can't see any other result based on what we know.
MLS announced the next 3 games in the season schedule, taking us through the end of September. For the Rapids we have:
Last night the Rapids dominated the stat sheet, outshooting the Dynamo 26 to 10 (7-3 on target), having almost 2/3rds of the possession, and winning a majority of the duels. All it took is 20 seconds of inattentiveness though for Houston to score, and an inability to finish (along with some pretty good saves by Houston's keeper) meant that the only stat that mattered was even.
Lets talk about both goals, starting with the Dynamo. Coming straight out of halftime the Dynamo went down our left side and then crossed to the far post where Ramirez was waiting to head it home, Last night I thought Abubakar had gotten sloppy again, but watching the replay today that's probably unfair. While Ramirez does get a step on him, it was really a perfectly placed cross that beat Lalas. Yarbrough probably should have come out to make a play, but again, the ball was put in the perfect place to handcuff him. Really the failure was at the point of the cross from Rodriguez who had received a little nothing pass in space between Trusty and Price. Trusty dropped off with the rest of the back line and Price kind of spun in a circle and waited too long to put pressure on Rodriguez, which let him set up that cross.
The Rapids got there's from an equally good pass though. After a Colorado corner was cleared in the final minute of stoppage back upfield to Vines who was playing free safety on the kick he dropped a pass over the Dynamo back line right to Abubakar's foot. Lalas could give some strikers lessons on one-touch control of the ball, bringing it down right where he needed it to nutmeg the keeper and level the score. He also beat the offside trap perfectly on the pass. Vines+Lalas, because they're the offense the Rapids deserve, but not the one they need right now.
Man of the Match: Younes Namli. Kamara had a great early game (he was a combined foot away from a hat-trick in the first 20 minutes) and Lalas got the goal, but Namli was the best player by far. He's shown flashed of what he can do this season but last night was the first time where he was the best player on the field for either team. His footwork and ball control are as good as I've seen on the Rapids since Valderrama retired. He got absolutely crunched on a tackle that many of the fans thought signaled the end of his night (if not worse) but he got right back up and a minute later was breaking Dynamo ankles again. He had a gorgeous effortless shot that dipped and swerved and just missed going inside the post, one of the best missed shots I've seen in this league. If he keeps doing that he'll meet the expectations that we put on him when we signed him as a DP.
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