Final Preseason Match? Hail No.

The Rapids played, or attempted to play, their final preseason match against Toronto on Saturday.  The weather had other ideas.  A wild opening 3 minutes had the score at 1-1 after the burgundy boys conceded in the first minute only to equalize on a Shinyashiki goal from a Mezquida pass two minutes later.  10 minutes after that the hail rolled in and the game went into a long delay.  The teams came back out and finished the half, only for another hail delay to hit at halftime.  It got o the point where they just called the game at halftime at 1-1.

Its hard to draw to many conclusions from a delayed and shortened match, but giving up a goal in the first minute isn't good.  The only regular starters missing were Vines and Namli (and the injured Benezet), while Moor got the start next to Abubakar.  I think we'll likely see this same lineup in DC on sAturday, with Vines and Namli re-inserted in place of Wynne and Mezquida.  Shinyashiki appears to be the one to get the nod in place of Benezet, and if I had to bet on the Moor/Trust battle I think the veteran will get the start.

Figuring out how to not leak goals is going to be key to the early season.  I expect the defense will add some depth this week as Kelly will almost certainly be signed and the fact that Afamefuma hasn't been released yet has me leaning towards him getting an offer as well.  That only leaves Will Vint as an unknown.  I'm assuming at this point he'll be signed once he qualifies as a homegrown player (there's some amount of time a player must spend in a team's Academy before he counts as a HG).

Later this week I'll have my annual roster review and predictions post before the first game preview on Friday!

Roster Moves

The Rapids have made a raft of roster moves over the last couple of days.

The big one is our newest homegrown signing.  Seventeen year old goalkeeper Abraham Rodriguez was signed to a homegrown contract yesterday.  Abe signed and played with the Colorado Springs Switchbacks last season and when the Rapids camp opened with only three keepers in it (Irwin, Rawls, and Rodriguez) it was fairly obvious he was going to be signed to be the team's third keeper this season.  He's already won USL Player of the Week honors last year, and Tim Howard has said how impressed he is by him, so that's a nice CV to bring to the role.  In case you're wondering the Rapids have only ever used their "3rd keeper" in 5 league games in their history, and 4 of those were Pablo's dalliance with Joe Nasco for 4 games in 2014.  (Steward Ceus playing the opening game of 2013 was the 5th).

Today the Rapids announced that Rodriguez, along with Niki Jackson, Seb Anderson, and Abdul Rwatubyaye, have been loaned to the Switchbacks for the 2020 season.  Given that Rodriguez has already started for the Springs he'll be expected to compete to start this year.  That makes it very unlikely we'll see him in a Rapids uniform this year, unless he's backing up Rawls in a friendly or something.  There's a slight chance we could see him as a backup for an Open Cup game but most likely he'll be cup-tied to the Switchbacks before we enter the competition.  Also today Matt Hundley was loaned to Howard's Memphis 901 side for the season.  The Rapids maintain the right to recall all of their players at any time should it be necessary.

Also catching up on preseason results the scrimmage on Wednesday resulted in a 2-1 Galaxy win.  Rubio had the Rapids goal to give us the 1-0 lead.  This was largely Rapids reserves versus Galaxy starters so its hard to draw much from the result but the one thing that's stood out to me over the two games I've seen is that both Trusty and Moor have struggled at center back.  That's suddenly gone from a position I was fairly comfortable with to our area of biggest concern, especially since Ford hasn't seen any minutes this preseason which is probably indicative of a further delay in his recovery.  In this match Trusty was beaten for the first goal and Moor gave LA their second goal on an own goal.  This will bear watching early this season.

Rapids Work Over Fire In First Full Warmup

Saturday afternoon the Rapids decided to shift from fitness and learning roles to actually playing to win.  And win they did.  In a game they controlled from start to finish, only a early defensive lapse gave the Fire any hope.  In the end a dominating 4-2 win gave Colorado its first result over another MLS team in preseason and has made it seem like they my pick up where they left off in 2019.

The Rapids started out with pretty close to their first-choice lineup:

Colorado controlled play from the opening whistle, but the Fire got behind the defense, first by beating Moor in a foot race, then by slipping inside Abubakar, for the first goal.  After that Chicago played on the back foot the rest of the way.  15 minutes after the Chicago goal Namli slipped a nice ball to Shinyashiki to level the match.  Things would stay tied to the break, but the Rapids were doing their best to score before it.  Rubio and Mezquida subbed in for Kamara and Namli at half and the team kept up the pressure.  Nicholson owned the first 15 minutes of the second half, scoring on a rebound and then setting up Acosta for a third goal.  The Rapids would sub 7 more players around the 75th minute, leaving only Price and Irwin to play the full 90 minutes.   The Rapids allowed a goal off a corner, but struck right back as Mezquida would get the final goal for the 4-2 scoreline.

We also found out on Saturday that Benezet broke his nose in Wednesday's scrimmage, which means he'll be out 2-4 weeks.  That most likely rules him out as a starter in DC for opening week.  The Rapids play LA tomorrow in what was a closed-door scrimmage, but apparently LA is streaming it on their website.  However its geolocked to LA.

Rapids Beaten By Revs In Preseason

Yesterday's match was largely contested by the reserves for Colorado, with the only likely starters in the opening XI being Trusty and possibly Lewis or Shinyashiki.  At halftime the Rapids were down 2-0.  Price and Irwin came in to start the second half and stabilized things a bit, giving up a goal but also scoring one as buildup work from Trusty and Shinyashiki Lewis got on an Anderson cross to make the score 3-1.  In the 60th minute pretty much the while first team subbed in, resulting in a lineup of Irwin, Rosneberry, Abubakar, Moor, Vines, Price, Acosta, Namli, Nicholson, Benezent, and Kamara.  Sadly, in a "that's so Rapids" moment, Benezet would only last 14 minutes until taking a ball to the face that ended up sending him to the hospital to get cleaned up.  Sounds like there's no long-term concern though.  The last 30 minutes would go scoreless and the Rapids lost 3-1.

Good to see Namli and Benezet (however limited) get their first work in a game.  While the scores don't matter and the coaches are clear the focus in these games are fitness and teamwork it would be nice to not get so blown out at times.  There are three games left, two full scrimmages at 1pm each of the next two Saturdays, both of which will be streamed online, and a closed-door scrimmage with the Galaxy next Wednesday.

Preseason Results

Over the weekend the Rapids took on TFC in a 120 minute game and lost 4-0.  The first half was split evenly between likely starters and reserves, with Rosenberry, Abubakar, Price, Nicholson, Acosta and Kamara starting.  This group gave up 3 goals in the first 60 minutes.  In the second half the full team subbed out with 3 starters on the second half team (Irwin, Trusty, and Vines).  They gave up an additional goal.  no time for Namli or Benezet, who had just arrived in camp, and oddly Rubio.

The Rapids next game will be tomorrow against New England.  The team also announced today that the two open games against Chicago (this Saturday) and TFC (next Saturday) will be streamed online.  Both games will kickoff at 1pm on the next two Saturdays.

Roster Moves And Jersey Debut

Two pieces of news tonight, a report from camp that some fo the trialists and younger players are being moved around or released, and the official launch of the jersey.  First to the roster.

Joseph Samuelson tweeted some news from camp.  Already signed players Niki Jackson and Abdul Rwatubyaye will be spending the rest of the season, and presumably the regular season, with the Switchbacks.  They're still Rapids players, but they will (I'm projecting) be loaned out for the season to Colorado Springs.  Similarly Brett Hundley is headed to Tim Howard's Memphis 901 team, presumably for the season.

As far as the trialists go, five of the nine have left camp.  Brian Lopez, Jacob Hauser-Ramsey, Kwadwo Poku, and Andres Alarcon have been released.  I predicted the first three were not likely to make the team but I'm a little surprised that draftee Robin Afamefuma was retained while Alarcon was released.  I expected the Argentinian to have the better shot at making the team.  Also, as expected, 15 year old striker Darren Yapi has returned to the Academy after getting a two week intro into the life of a professional.

That leaves draftees DM Jeremy Kelly, LB Robin Afamefuma, Academy CM, Will Vint, and former Academy/current Switchback GK Abe Rodriguez as unsigned players in camp.  My predictions on Kelly and Rodriguez are the same, they'll be signed, and I still expect Vint to return to the Academy for a year with a likely signing after he qualifies as a homegrown player.  The question mark is now Afamefuma.  We'll have to keep an eye on his playing time during the second half of camp.

While this news was circulating MLS had its official jersey launch.  For the Rapids that means our first official look at the "Nine Six" kit.  Overall no surprises if you've seen the earlier leaks, the one little touch I hadn't seen is that the 9 remaining inaugural teams are getting a "Founding Club" tag on the seam of the kit which is a cool look.  Otherwise the jersey is pretty meh in my opinion.  There's nothing wrong with it, but it doesn't blow me away either.  I would likely buy one, except that its been reported that later this year there will be a launch of throwback merchandise for the original clubs, so I'm saving my money to get some classic green Rapids swag.

Catching Up On Some Game Recaps

A nasty cold sidelined me last last week, which means we haven't had a chance to discuss our first two preseason matches.  Plus Vines got his debut for the Nats and Lewis got another cap.

Also, unrelated to the game results, both Benezet and Namli arrived in Denver last night.  The team apparently has the first part of the week off before camp restarts and a number of players returned to Denver for the break (I'm guessing in particular those with families here).  Presumably the two new signings will fly back to LA with the rest of the team midweek.

Now, on to the games.  Last Wednesday the Rapids got their first game" action in a scrimmage against Cal State - Fullerton.  I'm not going to use a full lineup image for every combination of lineups we've used in the first two games because this post would get out of control, but here's how we started

* = Unsigned player

The wingers are further forward than this lineup shows.  When you consider that Vines and Lewis were on Nats duty and Benezet and Namli haven't joined camp yet, that's pretty close to our starting XI on Feb. 29th.  Swap Vines for Afamefuna, Benezet for Shinyashiki, and Namli for Mezquida and that's what I would expect to see.

Overall the game had may subs, with Andre Rawls, Jeremy Kelly*, Drew Moor, Danny Wilson, Sebastian Anderson, Kwadwo Poku*, Brian Lopez*, Cole Bassett, Darren Yapi*, Niki Jackson, and Matt Hundley being the XI after halftime, then after another 30 minutes Jacob Hauser-Ramsey* in for Moor, Andres Alarcon* in for Wilson, Abraham Rodriguez* in for Rawls and Abdul Rwatubyaye in for Anderson, with Anderson returning in replace of Jackson at 90 (the teams played 105').

Drew Moor score for the Rapids before the defense gave up a late PK for a 1-1 draw.  I know the reaction is "wait,  we only managed a 1-1 draw against a college team) but this was the first game action for any of these guys and the coaches stressed the only thing that mattered from this game was fitness.  So I'm not worried.

On Saturday Colorado took on Orange County SC of the USL.  They went with a more mixed lineup to start:

Only five or so expected starters in this one.  Cole Bassett continued his hot preseason after scoring twice for the U20s he got a goal here early.  Shinyashiki drew a penalty, which Kamara *sigh* had saved, but the resulting Rapids possession resulted in a Kamara goal from outside the box.  At this point we need to have somebody else taking PKs.  Kamara's track record in the last 9 months is not good.

At halftime the lineup became: Clint Irwin, Jeremy Kelly*, Lalas Abubakar, Auston Trusty, Robin Afamefuna*, Nicolas Mezquida, Brian Lopez*, Kellyn Acosta, Darren Yapi*, Niki Jackson, Matt Hundley.  Niki Jackson got a brace in the second half as the Rapids won 4-0.  Rawls would sub in for the final 30 minutes between the pipes and Seb Anderson would get the last 20 minutes in place of Yapi.

The game was over in time for the guys to watch Sam Vines and Jon Lewis play for the Nats against Costa Rica.  Vines got the start, as had been announced, while Lewis was on the bench.  Vines had a great game in defense, rarely putting a foot wrong, and was called out by many commentators for how well he showed at a historically weak position.  His contributions on offense were less than I think Berhalter wants out of his LB, so he has work to do, but he certainly put his best foot forward at claiming a backup role to one of the likely out of positions RB's (Dest, Cannon, etc.) who would still start in front of him.  Vines got 77 minutes before being subbed out.  Meanwhile Lewis had a quiet game, only getting 17 minutes at the end of the 1-0 win.