Talk About A Bad Bounce

Before we get started on the game review an important bit of news from the league today.  They announced what had been obvious to anyone paying attention.  The playoffs will be decided on a PPG basis, and no further makeup games will be played.  The remaining 2 (or 3 in Colorado's and a few others case) games is all that's left of the 2020 regular season.  Lots of complaining about this from the peanut gallery but given that there was a precedent from the 2001 season and it was clear there wasn't time to play all the missing games this shouldn't be a surprise.

Now, on to the game last night.  The Rapids played significantly better than they did on Saturday, but suffered the same result.  This time a own goal worthy of George John bit the Rapids late, as a cross from Minnesota managed to find Abubakar's head perfectly to end up in the back of the net.  Its still unclear if Lalas was trying to clear the ball over the bar or if he didn't even see it.  Either way its probably a cleaner goal than 75% of the goals scored in MLS this season.

Prior to that the team had done a good job staying with Minnesota, just missing on the final touch.  United took the lead just before half but Colorado worked their way back into it as soon as the second half started and the 1-1 draw it appeared the game was heading towards was a fair result for the play on the field.  There wasn't much time after the Lalas own goal in the 89th minute for the Rapids to get back to even.

The first Minnesota goal came off a bad turnover by Bassett in midfield while the team was transitioning into the attack.  While Danny Wilson got pulled (correctly) across the field to keep tracking his man a wide space was left open behind him as Vines was caught upfield on the sudden turnover.  United took full advantage of the open space and Lod had plenty of time to set up his shot.  Live by the kids, die by the kids.

The Rapids goal was a great team goal.  Benezet (remember him?) sent a decent pass into the box that Namli corralled and played square across the middle of the box.  Rubio, very unselfishly, didn't turn on it and let the ball run, then tapped it to the onrushing Shinyashiki who finished it.  Nicely worked by all involved and really only left Bassett out of the attacking players.

Next up is Seattle in our last home game of the year.  With today's news we can now analyze what's needed to make the playoffs.  5 points in our last  3 games (SEA, @POR, @HOU) guarantees us a spot.  4 points and Vancouver not winning both of its remaining games (@POR, LAG) or San Jose not winning either game (LAFC, @SEA) would get us in.  3 points and Vancouver and FSL (@LAG, SKC) losing a game or one of them losing and San Jose losing and drawing their two games would get us in.  2 points is probably technically possible but unlikely.  Seattle and Portland are going to be tough games, it will likely come down to needing a win on Decision Day in Houston.

Man of the Match: Younes Namli.  He played back in the center for the first time in months and he is just more involved and dynamic there.  Watching him get on his horse and start a run is entertaining with ball control we've rarely seen in a Rapids player.

Rapids Head North To Play The Loonies

 

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.

Restarts Suck

The Rapids started the season with 2 wins, then COVID hit.  Restarting at the MLS is Back tournament the Rapids lost to FSL 2-0.  After finishing the tournament they took a month off and restarted against FSL, and lost 4-1.  When COVID hit the team they took a month off and restarted on Saturday night, losing to SKC 4-0.  Yeah, restarts are not our strength, but hey, at least we're consistent.

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.

What Is This "Soccer Game" You Speak Of?

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.

Back, For What Its Worth

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.

Game Off, Again

As expected the Rapids and MLS announced today that Saturday's game in Portland has been rescheduled for Wednesday November 4th at 8pm MT.  The Rapids next scheduled game is next Wednesday against LAFC at 7pm, with fans (for now).  The release also confirmed the Athletic report of the 3 additional positives.  Colorado could return to practice tomorrow if everyone who has tested negative continues to do so, but there's been no report if they will or not.

Colorado will now play 10 games in the 32 days between October 7th and the end of Decision Day on November 8th.  Its a brutal schedule and, obviously, if there's further disruption to the schedule the league will have to decide if the games get made up, and when.  Fraser will have a tough task on his hands figuring out how to rotate the squad and use the depth we have.

Due to family matters there will be little to no coverage here of next week's home games against LAFC and the Galaxy but I expect to pick things back up like normal with the Sounders match on 10/14, and will be in the stadium for Rocky Mountain Cup duties when FSL visits on 10/18.