Path To The Final Is Open

Last night's game was fairly ugly to watch.  The Rapids certainly played down to their opponents while the officiating was rough.  In the end though the home side got the result and moves on to the quarterfinals for the first time in 20 years.  The Burgundy Bots took the lead twice, gave it back twice, and finally won in 7 rounds of PKs.

This morning the draw was held for the rest of the competition.  The 8 remaining teams (all MLS this year) are split into a West pot and an East pot with the winners meeting in the final.  Colorado was grouped with San Jose, Houston, and St. Louis, while Columbus, NYCFC, Orlando, and Atlanta make up the East.  For the quarterfinals the Rapids will host San Jose while S. Louis hosts Houston.  Then if Colorado beats San Jose they'll hos the StL/Hou winner in the west semifinal (if San Jose wins then the StL-Hou winner hosts them).  The final will be hosted by the winner of the eastern group.

So Colorado gets four straight home games in the USOC then travels to the final, if they get that far.  This is our best chance to win it since we reached the final in 1999.  But what stands in our wat is the hottest team in MLS, San Jose.  Top of the league, won 9 of 10 games this season, only allowed 6 goals.  If, somehow, we get by them then you would think we would be favorites to win the semis.

The semifinal will be May 19th or 20th at the Dick.  The prior weekend we're in Sandy for the first leg of the Rocky Mountain Cup and the following Saturday we're at home facing Dallas in our last game before the World Cup break.  San Jose has Dallas at home the weekend before and a trip to Portland after.  If I'm the Rapids I look to get (at least) a draw in Utah and punt on the Dallas game.  Should they beat San Jose the semifinal wouldn't be until mid-September, with the final in October.

Back to last night's match, some thoughts:

Random Thoughts:

• Last night really showed the gap between the leagues to me.  The Rapids went out there without two of their biggest names (Steffen and Aaronson), pulled two other notable starters at half (Cannon and Ojediran), played pretty badly the hole game, and were down a man for the last 15 minutes plus all 30 minutes of extra time, and it still took a PK for a team that was USL Champs two years ago and a playoff team last year to use that man advantage.  There's a lot of talk about how the Springs kept it close and played hard, but even with that they were struggling to stay in the game.
• Speaking of that man down, I don't know what Thompson was thinking.  Its a clear red as he swept his back leg through the legs of the Switchback.
• A couple of other big events,  First the Georgi goal to take the lead in extra time has a hint of offside, but I don't know if MLS VAR calls it back.  The EPL might, as they sit there and draw lines, but eyeballing it off the screen like MLS I don't know if there's enough there to overturn.
• Meanwhile the Switchbacks PK late in extra time seemed like BS on the 8-bit scoreboard in the stadium, but watching it on a real screen today I'm leaning towards it being the right call.  It does appear like it hit Atencio's arm and he had it out away from his body.
• Speaking of, Josh can go sit on the bench next to Steffen now.  He was involved in both Switchbacks goals.  On the first he's standing 2 yards away from an unmarked Springs attacker in the box and doesn't close him down, instead he's bouncing around like he's hoping for an outlet pass to start a break, but Hamzat is another yard past him and would be the better player to take that pass.  So then its an easy put away for that attacker.  And he missed his PK in the shootout.  A number of fans think he had a good night passing, but he wasn't involved in either Rapids goal.  Being a good passer that doesn't lead to anything isn't enough to make up for repeated defensive mistakes.
• There were a few players that seemed to struggle and revert to old habits.  Yapi seemed off (especially in the first half) and Cannon struggled at times.  To be fair to Reggie it was his first game back off of injury.
• The Rapids had a hard time adjusting to the ref.  Sometimes you get a ref that is going to be ticky-tack about things and you have to deal with it, not just complain.

Man of the Match: Rafa Navarro.  Yeah, I know, I'm becoming a broken record on this.  But he had the assist on both goals, scored his PK, and has played all but the first 69 minutes against Union Omaha in this 7 games in 19 day stretch, including the full 120 last night.  He's going to need the World Cup break when we get there.

I-25 Derby In The Open Cup

Tomorrow night the Rapids are going to try to do something they've never done at the Dick.  Qualify for the Open Cup quarterfinals.  The last time the burgundy boys made it past the Round of 16 they were the black and blue boys and were playing their last season at Mile High (though both USOC gamers were on the road that year) and it was the last time we beat a MLS team in this competition, taking down FSL 1-0 in Utah.  This is also the 10th anniversary of the last time we played the Switchbacks, beating them in USOC play, so its only appropriate that they're our opponents tomorrow night for this all-Colorado battle.  If Minnesota beats San Jose in the match about to kickoff the Colorado teams were be the furthest west teams left in this year's competition.  Kickoff tomorrow night is at 7pm.

I'm still not going to predict a lineup for this one.  We're on our 6th game in 18 days, with another one to come this weekend before we finally get a midweek break.  Its really going to be a matter of who has legs left to go in this one.  The Springs have only played 3 in that same time, so they'll be better rested.  I do expect Nico Hansen to get the start in goal but outside of that its an open question.

Prediction: 3-1 win.  To be blunt, tired or not, a team that ran Houston out of its place 6-3 a couple of weeks ago should no be losing to a lower-league team in the same stadium.  I'm sure the derby nature of this game will keep it tighter than we're comfortable for longer than we want but in the end the greater talent of the Rapids should prevail.  Of course, the Rapids have found ways to lose the games plenty of times in the past (Orlando, Atlanta, New Mexico...).

Soaked

I predicted a tow goal loss in Vancouver, and that's what happened, but the score line flattered us.  With the exception of about 5-10 minutes in each half Vancouver had full control of this game and it never felt like we were going to get anything out of it.  In the end a week against 3 of the toughest teams in the league ended with 1 point, which shows you how far the Rapids have to go still.

Random Thoughts:

• This game could have easily been 3-0, or 5-2, or anything in-between.  Vancouver missed multiple great chances, and had a goal disallowed while our goal probably shouldn't have counted.
• On our goal the ball appears to hit both Sealy's arm and particularly Navarro's arm right before it went in the goal.  Now only one angle showed that and there's enough of a potential optical illusion there that I can see why VAR didn't send it down, but I'm 95% sure we got away with one there.
• It was a particularly bad miss when in the second half Vancouver had a goal disallowed for a similar handball.  Had Vancouver not come out on top they would still be screaming about those calls.
• On the Rapids goal, Ojediran played probably the best pass of the season to set up the attacking sequence.
• Meanwhile on the disallowed goal the only reason it even hit the attackers arm is the Herrington came from way back to make a pinpoint tackle to deny the attacker the easy shot.  Gorgeous play.
• You know last time we went to Canada and Steffen had a horrible game that cost us points and I said if he had one more bad game it would be time to bench him?  Well this game wasn't as bad as Toronto, but it wasn't good.  He looked slow on the first Vancouver goal, though I'm not sure he could have saved it anyway, and was completely caught in no-man's land on the second.  He also struggled to catch anything all night, giving up a number of rebounds but none that turned out to be dangerous.  He just looked like he was laboring all night.  I think its time for Hansen.
• Outside of the gorgeous Herrington play our defense struggled all night.  Holding was cooked regularly and neither Thompson or Navarro looked great.  And the less said about Rosenberry on the third goal the better (nothing Keegan could do, he just doesn't have the speed anymore).
• For his second start in a row Aaronson was subbed out in the second half while the team was down a goal.  That's not what you want to see from somebody of his stature/price
• In the 3 games last week the Rapids gave up 6 goals.  Their offense combined for 8 shots on goal in those 3 games.  Really hard to win with a dichotomy like that.
• The Rapids had a majority of possession in each if those three games, but couldn't turn it into anything.
• After this rough week the Rapids face 5 teams around or below them before the World Cup break.  They're at Houston, Minnesota, and FSL, and face St. Louis and Dallas at home, They should be looking to get 7-9 points out of those (including at least 1 in Sandy) and staying in a playoff position going into the break.
• Before that though, they've got the Switchbacks at home on Wednesday night for a place in the Open Cup Quarterfinals, A round they've never reached wearing burgundy.

Man of the Match: Rafa Navarro.  Easy way out on this one but with the goal he leads the league in goals + assists.  If he scores in Houston on Saturday he'll be halfway to the team season-goal scoring record (16, Casey '09, Rubio '23) with less than a third of the season done.  If he gets and goal contribution he'll be just under halfway to the team record as well (25, Mihailovic '24).

H2O

The rapids of the Fraser River meet the whitecaps of the Pacific near Vancouver

Water meets water north of the border tomorrow as the Rapids meet their aquatic counterparts the Whitecaps in Vancouver.  Colorado is coming off a good 0-0 draw in LA on Wednesday while the 'Caps are rested after their game last weekend.  There are 27K expected in BC Place for this one as this is the last home game for Vancouver until August due to FIFA taking over their stadium for the World Cup.  Kickoff is at 8:30pm MT.

Player Availability:

OUT: M Josh Atencio (yellow card suspension), M Ted Ku-DiPietro (shoulder), M Connor Ronan (leg)

QUESTIONABLE: D Jackson Travis (ankle)

I would be very surprised if Travis plays given the turf at BC Place.  Reggie Cannon is back and will be in the gameday roster according to Wells, but I wouldn't expect him to start.

This is really just a guess based on who's available and who's played what this week.  Everyone is going to have to dig deep, especially down the center spine, to come up with another 90 minutes.  Maybe Rosneberry starts?  Or Yapi goes again since he didn't start last Saturday?  Do we risk Cobb in the middle instead of Herrington?

Prediction: 0-2 loss.  Vancouver is rested at home and is the best offense in the league.  We're tired and couldn't score against a good team on Wednesday.  I just don't see much in this one for us.

 

Our First Point From The Bank!

It wasn't always the most exciting soccer, but a point is a point and for good chunks of the game the Rapids dominated play.  A bit of a statement from this Rapids team to go into LA and get their first point in a scoreless draw against a very good LAFC front line in Bouanga and Sonny.  We do have areas to improve on the attack against these tough teams but a big victory for the defense in this one.

Random Thoughts:

• Both teams hit the post, but the closest anyone got was LAFC's shot that went off both the crossbar and the post.  We got lucky with that one.
• The Rapids had the best overall looks though, with Lloris having to make two great saves and a stretched out but somewhat routine save in the first half.
• At halftime the listed xG from Apple was 0.25 for Colorado and 0.0 for LAFC.  xG is not a great stat at a game (or half) level but 0 is still 0 no matter the time period.
• I was a little worred about having Thompson, Travis, and Atencio in the starting XI given that they've all been up and down this year, but to their credit they all had good games, particularly Atencio.
• Wells made it sound like Travis' injury wasn't that bad in the post-game, but I have my doubts we see him on the turf in Vancouver.
• Another player we won't see is Atencio who picked up his 5th yellow (in 7 starts!) and will be suspended.  Even Pablo is giving some side-eye to that collection.
• Herrington made the MLS team of the (mid) week with a 100% pass accuracy on 120 passes.  I would be shocked if we're not hearing about a sale within the next 365 days.  If he shows up in the World Cup I'd cut that down to 120.
• The Rapids had 73% of the possession, but only 2 shots on target.  I'm sure Wells was emphasizing that area of improvement in the locker room post game.
• The flip side of that though is that with 73% of the ball it doesn't give the opposition much time to attack, and Colorado only gave up 1 shot on target all night.
• The focus now shifts to Vancouver, likely an even tougher game as the Whitecaps didn't play midweek and will be well rested.  They'll also have 27K in the house for their last home game until August, due to BC Place being used for the World Cup.  A draw there would be a very solid week on the road.

Man Of The Match: Rob Holding - He's been the quiet center of the back line this year but in this one he really stepped up to put out any fire that was developing.  I wasn't originally sold on him at the end of last season but he's been the veteran presence the kids like Travis and Herrington have needed so far this season.