Leagues Cup? What's The Leagues Cup?

Tomorrow night in Nashville the Rapids kick off their inaugural Leagues Cup run.  We'll et to the specific game preview further down, but a quick recap of what this competition is and how it works.

• Every team in MLS and Liga MX (Mexico's top league) is participating.  The current champions of Liga MX and MLS got byes into the knockout stages, the rest of the teams were split into 3-team groups.  The first two teams (one Liga MX and one MLS team) were seeded based on their finishes in each league's last cycle, the rest of the teams were placed somewhat geographically.  For Colorado that put us in a group with the seeded teams of Nashville and Toluca.
• Each team plays each other once, with all games at MLS stadiums.  So Nashville will host Colorado (tomorrow) and Toluca (mid-week) before Colorado hosts Toluca (next Monday).
• The Colorado-Toluca game, despite being held at the Dick, is technically considered a neutral site game and Toluca is the "home" team because their the seeded team.  That means that the standard Rapids game ceremonies (like the Oar) won't take place.  If there's a kit clash we will also wear our road kits.
• Each game is the standard 3 points for a win, 1 point for each team for a draw.  However if a game is draw after 90 minutes both teams will get a point and then there will be a PK shootout with the winner getting an extra point (in last night's opening matches Leon and Vancouver went 19 rounds before Leon won 16-15!).
• The top 2 teams in the group move on to the knockout stage.

So what that means is that the minimum to get through is 2 points (whereas without the bonus point in a 3 team group you could get trough with a draw and loss if you win the GD tiebreaker).  3 points is probably enough unless you get unlucky on the GD tiebreaker, and 4 points clinches advancement.

Knowing all that. lets talk about tomorrow's match.  Kickoff in Nashville is at 6:30 MT and like the regular season all of these games are streamed through MLS Season Pass.  I don't know if tomorrow's game is one of the free ones this weekend or not.

Normally this is where I would list the injury report, but at least as of right now the Rapids have not put out a new injury report.  I don't know if they're required to for this competition.  There was a press conference with Fraser and Rosenberry this afternoon where Robin said Rubio still isn't ready to play yet.  *sigh*

We also haven't heard anything about Navarro's status, but I'm assuming if he had gotten his visa the would be heavily promoting him so I have to assume he won't be available either.  Great job by the FO keeping the fans engaged over this big summer DP signing, its not like this Leagues Cup is essentially the only thing we have left to play for or anything.  I know the Media Department wasn't happy about my last comments over a lack of information, but that doesn't change my frustration over it.  A team that struggles for relevance in this city , who's regular season was over by Memorial Day, and who won't play a home game after the Toluca match for 6 weeks needs everything they can get to keep fans engaged through the dog days of summer, not silence.

Anyway, I'm not going to predict a lineup because of the lack of availability information.  The only thing I will say is that I expect it to be very close to what we've seen the last couple of games.  It feels like Fraser has settled into a lineup he's happy with now that they've added Gutman.  The one change we might see is Ilic starting instead of Yarbrough.

(And I just realized that since that news came out right before the last game I never touched on it here.  Ilic was purchased and signed to a 2.5 year deal through 2025, with club options for 2026 and 2027, last Saturday.  No news on the transfer fee or salary has leaked, though we'll find out the latter when the union publishes the salaries once the window closes.)

Prediction: 1-1 draw, we lose the shootout.  Goal by Harris.  This is a little optimistic I'll admit but Nashville is only an OK home team and they've been in a bit of a funk.  I think the possibility is there to steal a point.  Given our PK woes (both taking and defending) I don't have hopes that we'll win a Shoot out though.,