Embarrassing Product From League Covers Up Rapids Loss

Listen, based on their play last night the Rapids weren't going to win, or probably even draw, this game.  That doesn't excuse the league for the atrocious product they put out there for this one though.  It started before kickoff when the national broadcaster took time out to run a LAFC video glorifying their new owner, Giorgio Chiellini.  This is the type of thing you would see run in the local pregame or before the local broadcast in the pre-Apple TV days.  It was a ridiculous thing for Apple TV to show to a national audience.

Then the game was over almost before it was started with Jackson Travis getting nailed for a very harsh red card in the 6th minute.  Now this has been talked about a lot in the last 24 hours.  It was a dumb play by Jackson Travis.  He's racing at a ball he's not going to get to and goes up with his arm out.  That said, its not really a red card.  There's no real swing and there's no obvious malice.  Plus the arm gets the chest before the face.  Yes, my rule it could be a red, but that's not how that play is called 95% of time. In the earlier game yesterday a Miami player put his hand into his opponents face very intentionally (but with less force) and only got a yellow.  There's no way that should have been a reed for essentially the first foul of the game.

But that was great for the broadcast as former LAFC pbp/now AppleTV pbp guy Max Bretos was allowed plenty of time to interview Giorgio Chiellini in the booth and talk at length about LAFC.  This, again, on a national broadcast not a locally produced one.  Once that wrapped up Bretos even cmae back and acknowledged they weren't covering the game so they could hype LAFC with "While we were gone LAFC were peppering the goal”.  Its always been clear than the Apple TV coverage is slanted towards the top teams with only the best broadcasters bothering to treat the smaller teams as being worth their time (during the New England game the pbp guy mentioned that "Steffen stepped aside for the National Team" even while Steffen was clearly listed as OUT on the injury report all media gets due to his injury"). but this was as blatant as I've seen with the ignoring of the fact that there was a second team on the field.

In all my years of watching the Rapids this was the first time I could remember that I seriously considered turning off the game in the first half.  The coverage was that bad combined with a game the Rapids were clearly going to lose.  Sure enough before half they gave up a goal.  Somehow on an attack that both Cannon and Maxso were covering they both managed to trip Bouanga simultaneously in the box.  That's over $2M of salary we used to give up that penalty.  Maxso even intentionally stuck his leg backwards as part of the trip which, even if there was some embellishment there you can't do that and expect to get away with it.

LAFC came out right after half and got a second and it was all over.  Other than the atrocious defending there's not much worth analyzing this game.  Any offensive game plan had to be thrown out once the red card hit (they had 2 shots on goal in the game) and you can only expect the defense to keep up for so long after a 6th minute red card to one of their starters.  Move on to Vancouver.

Man of the Match: Nobody, just nothing to judge.