Our First Trip To San Diego

Joshua Tree National Park

Colorado will play its sixth game against a California side tomorrow night as they finish their season series against San Diego with their first trip to the coastal city.  Interestingly we've played our two games against the San's before playing either of our games against the LA teams (not counting the CCC matchup).  The Rapids need to get out of their funk with no wins in the last 4 before the Rocky Mountain Cup match this weekend.  Luckily nobody is on yellow card warning so barring a red card discipline should not be a problem going into the rivalry match.  Kickoff from sunny SoCal is at 8:30pm tomorrow.

Availability Report:

OUT: M Ali Fadal (knee); F Rafael Navarro (ankle)

Uhoh.  I guess that ankle knock Rafa got on Saturday was worse than we hoped.  If the trade off of not having him travel tomorrow is that he can start on Saturday I'm ok with that sacrifice.  But if he's out multiple games that's not good.

I think we're going to see some rotation due to the three game week and a reverting to the 4-2-3-1 due to Navarro's injury.  Plus it might be time to shake things up and see if we can get a different result.  Our lack of forward depth is showing with Rafa out.  I assume Yapi gets the start but it could be one of the Harris' or Cabral up front.

Prediction: 2-0 loss.  Maybe Mihailovic gets one on a set piece but otherwise the way we've played recently and without Navarro I don't have much hope.  San Diego's possession game wilted under our pressure in the home match but a lot of that came from Rafa's work rate.  I think SD is much more successful this time around.