A Little Bit Of This & A Little Bit Of That

A hodgepodge of news and previews today so I decided to put it all in one post.  Starting out there was an announcement this morning of an official ownership group, calling themselves Denver FC for now, to bring a NWSL or USL W team to Denver.  The group includes Lakewood native and Rapids analyst and host Jordan Angeli, who played for the NSWL's Washington Spirit and WNY Flash (as well as the earlier WPS Boston Breakers).  They filed for a D1 bid last fall and are actively working on gaining an expansion slot.  At this time there's no affiliation with the Rapids.   Adding a woman's team would be a great move for Denver, which doesn't have a WNBA or women's soccer team.  Consider me in full support of this move.  They'll have their kickoff event at Number 38 on July 21st during the USA-Vietnam Women's World Cup group stage match.

Back on the men's side a bit of unfortunate news as the Rapids announced today that Alex Gersbach has undergone surgery to address a tendon injury and will miss 6-8 weeks.  Optimistically this means he'll be back about the time the Leagues Cup wraps up and league play restarts.  I don't know which came first, the need to do this which led to trading for LB Andrew Gutman, or knowing that we acquired Gutman meant that they felt comfortable getting this addressed now since there was cover at LB.

Last but not least we have a game tomorrow.  Well, half a game.  At 7pm tomorrow night the second half of the 4th of July game against Portland will be played at the Dick.  Tickets from the 4th are valid for entry tomorrow night and if you need a ticket because you gave away your fourth of July ticket (like me) it seems like plenty of people out there are offering theirs.

The game will pickup just as if they were coming out of halftime on the 4th.  The same XI for each team will start on the field (though I think the teams will be allowed to make subs just as if they had made them at halftime of a regular game).  There are some special rules however if players are no longer available:

• If a player who was in the game when it was postponed is no longer available (due to injury or no longer being on the team) they can be replaced with somebody who was on the bench on Tuesday night without using one of the 5 subs/3 sub windows the team gets.
• If a player who was on the bench when the game was postponed is no longer available they can be replaced by any player who was on the roster and available when the game started.  In the case of the Rapids that means players like Gutman (was not a Rapid yet) and Bombito (was with team Canada) can not be added to the bench.  I think players who were listed as out injured on Tuesday, like Rubio, are also ineligible to be added for this restart.  This rule will allow us to add Abe Rodriguez to the bench to replace Ilic, who's loan expired since the 4th of July.
• The only exception to the above is for goalkeepers, if a team loses the active goalkeeper in the game and the goalkeeper on the bench they can then take any goalkeeper they have and add them to the active lineup.  That's the only way a player can go from "not in the gameday roster" to "on the field for the restart".

Its impossible to predict what's going to happen tomorrow night, so I'm not even going to try.  Its a weird situation we've never experienced before.