Player Odds And Ends

Catching up on a few player movements in the last week.

• Colorado signed Akol Akon from Sydney FC

Akon is a 17 year old Aussie who made his professional debut for Sydney last season.  He can't join the Rapids until he's 18 so he was signed and loaned back to Sydney for the 2026-27 season and will join the burgundy boys in July.  Reports are that the FO sees him on a similar pathway as Herrington and Sydney was smart enough to get a sell-on clause.  Akon has been capped by the Australia U-17 team 13 times over the last two years.

• Zack Campagnolo loaned to St. Louis for the rest of 2026 with option to buy

Campagnolo has been a rotating starter in goal for Rapids 2 who's contract will elevate him to the first team next season.  In exchange the Rapids get an international slot through 2027.  Campagnolo is fourth choice for the first team at best and would get time if there were a raft of injuries.  The international slot also allows the Rapids to roster Sadiq when his visa comes through.

• Farkhi scores and gets red carded in Israel's Nations League match with Austria today

Farkhi got his second cap by starting for Israel today.  In the 52nd minute he was yellow carded before a corner kick.  In the 55th minute he scored Israel's only goal of the match to level it at 1.  In the 56th minute he received a second yellow card for excessive celebration.  The celebration was pulling out the corner flag and miming using it as a pool cue or rifle, depending on your point of view.  Neymar's celebration.  Needless to say in today's environment the latter interpretation is going viral.  Regardless of his intention he needs to be smarter about what it will appear to be, and he's a complete idiot for doing it while on a yellow card.  Pulling the flag is almost always inviting the ref to give you a yellow regardless of your celebration.

• Donovan Phillip, Georgi Minoungou, and Wayne Frederick are also on international duty

Phillip is with St. Lucia and Frederick is with Trinidad & Tobago for Nations League games while Minoungou is wilt Burkina Faso for Cup of Nations qualifiers.  All four will miss Saturday's Rapids game against LA.  In case your wondering Israel has multiple games still to play in this window so Farkhi being suspended doesn't mean he can be released early to return to the club.

The Badge, The Players, The Fans Deserve Better - Three Years Later

 

Last Wednesday our focus was rightly on the USOC semifinal, as disastrous as that was, so the anniversary of the C38 protest that night 3 years earlier kind of passed us by.  I had planned to circle back to that tonight to cover where things had gone in those 1103 days between that night and now, but Matt Pollard over at Burgundy Wave beat me to it today.

Go read his column, it covered just about every point I had planned to cover and he's a better writer than me so you'll get more out of it.  The only thing I'll add is that in my prior columns on this I've asked the question "The Badge, The Players, The Fans Deserve Better, have they go it?" and the answer is no.

The Rapids FO has done a good to great job of finding money to invest in the roster by selling off pieces for big money (Bombito, Mihailovic, Herrington, Navarro) but the problem is that has largely come at the expense of results on the field.  In those three years we've managed two semifinal appearances (Leagues Cup 2024, USOC 2026) and been blown out of both games.  In the league play we finished 7th in the West/13th overall and 11th/21st and our one playoff series ended in blowout losses too.  Off the field there's been a few additions to the stadium/fan experience but for the most part its the same run-down stadium that's way behind the times as it was 3 years ago.

Its very clear that the Front Office is still handcuffed by the same budget restrictions they were three years ago, and for all of KSE's talk then, and Kevin Demoff's talk this offseason, about investing in this club and making it a winner we're still a afterthought in the KSE stable.  And the badge, the players, the fans still deserve better.

Book Review: Emancipation for Goalposts

Amazon link

I found this book recently while digging through the history shelves at Boulder's Bookworm.  I'm always up for a good crossover between history and soccer so I grabbed it.  This seemed similar to Gunshots and Goalposts on football during the Troubles (which based on my search I've never reviewed here) which I enjoyed.

This is a solid book about football in Yugoslavia and then what football was like in the 6/7 countries that formed after the Yugoslavian civil war.  What this isn't, despite the subtitle, is an explanation of football's role in the civil war.  As far as I can tell that's because it didn't really play one.

The book starts with a couple of chapters detailing the history of football in the region before Yugoslavia was founded after WW1, and then the ~70 years before the country broke up.  This includes both the National team's results and also the major successes of its club teams.  Red Star, Hajduk Split, Partizan, and Dinamo Zagreb are heavily covered as you would expect.  Their successes in Europe, culminating with Red Star's European Cup championship on the cusp of the civil war is also featured, as is Yugoslavia's expulsion from Euro 1992 because of the war (they were replaced by Denmark, who would go on to win the tournament).

The book then turns to a history of the civil war and the founding of the breakaway states.  Football is barely mentioned in this chapter, with a couple of names associated with the running of clubs or ultras popping up and an occasional aside to how soldiers would identify themselves as supporters of one of the big teams.

After that its a couple of chapters covering the new leagues and new National teams that were formed in the wake of the dissolution.  One note is that in 1990 Croatia played its first international match of its modern history in Zagreb against a travelling U.S. team who had played in Poland a week earlier.  The starting lineup that night included Steve Trittschuh, Robin Fraser, Peter Vermes, and Marcelo Balboa.  Croatia won 2-1 with Troy Dayak scoring for the Yanks.  'Celo picked up a yellow card.  Since Croatia wasn't yet recognized by FIFA this is considered an 'unofficial' match and doesn't appear in the record books of results from that year.

The book finishes by following the large immigrant population from the Balkans, especially Croatia, in Australia and the impact on football there.  Then it turns towards the work being done in the former Yugoslav republics to repair fences with football and talks about how the newest republic, Kosovo, had lead to some  internationals to question if they want file a switch to play for them.

Overall I give this 3 of 5 stars.  I found the history of football interesting and as somebody who lived through the time period of the Yugoslavian civil war but wasn't old enough to really focus on it (I was in high school/college, my general reaction was "that seems bad, ok, back to thermodynamics") the overview of what happened filled in some gaps.  Unfortunately it didn't live up to the sub-title like I was hoping it would.  As you can tell the book is a little scattered.  The last two chapters felt like they were tacked on to reach a full book length and it would have been just as good without them.

If you want to know more about football in that part of the world I'd recommend it.  Otherwise there are better football books to read (like Gunshots & Goalposts above).

Rapids Waste Best Offensive Performance Since April

Colorado game out of the gate and took an early lead, gave it back, took a two goal lead, and then folded like a cheap suit to surrender 3 goals for the second time in a week and lose 2 points they desperately needed.

On the plus side both Whittaker and Farkhi started, and our DPs combined for two goals bracketing a goal from our first round draft pick.  Whittaker also took the corner that led to Phillip's goal but since there was a save between the kick and the goal he doesn't get an official assist.  Still, two goals and starting the attack on the third is a great outing.  Farkhi, on the other hand, was a bit quieter.  He had a couple of good looks and the best xG on the team out of the players who didn't score, but he was never really threatening.

The troubling thing was the lack of pressure and intensity late in the game when the subs came in.  Seattle scored two of their goals after the 75th minute and they were given plenty of time and space to do it.  Darren Yapi and Josh Atencio particularly stood out as not engaging defensively as you would hope.  Stealing this from fellow Rapids fan Ben on Burgundy Sky.

Yapi came on in the 64th, Atencio and Minoungou in the 72nd.  Surprising no one, parking the bus did not work.

To be slightly fair to the team, all three of the Sounders goals were great shots, the last two being absolute bangers.  The three of them had a combined x^ of 0.17.  In comparison Phillp's goal had an xG of 0.54.  The problem was that we gave them the room to get those shots off.  Wells has to figure out why this team is so mentally weak when things start to go sidways.

Losing these two points is a real blow to our playoff chances.  Of the 9 games we had left Seattle was the worst team on PPG, they were beat up, on a 11 game winless streak, and we were at home.  If we couldn't get 3 points from this game where are we going to get the 8-9 points we need in the last 8 games to hit the Bodmer Line?  Trips to Dallas and San Jose seem unlikely, and even our trips to the Galaxy next week and Portland are not reliable given our road form.  We've got Minnesota at home, which seems winnable and maybe Chicago, but Vancouver and San Jose, even at the Dick, feel like a long shot.  Not to mention 6 of those 8 games are happening during 3-game weeks.

Man of the Match: Morgan Whittaker.  2 goals, unofficial assist, yeah, that's what we need from our most expensive player ever.

Can A 7th Placed Team Have A Must-Win At This Point?

Seattle's Seafair Pirates, a pack of rogues 

Avast there!  Your local crew has an appropriate nautical opponent for International Talk Like A Pirate Day tomorrow   So drink up me hearties!  Yo ho!

Ok, I can't keep that up for a full preview.  But yes, the Sounders are in town tomorrow night to face a Rapids side that's staggering a bit after the midweek USOC loss.  Seattle is beat up themselves and in a death spiral, they've gone 12 games without a win.  This is the easiest game left on our schedule (home against the weakest team left) and its a must win.  Colorado needs 9 points in the last 9 games to get to the playoff average and if we can't get 3 here I question where we're going to get them.  This is about as much a must-win as we can have.  Kickoff is at 7:30.

Player Availability:

OUT: GK Zach Steffen (shoulder), M Ted Ku-DiPietro (shoulder), F Mamadou Billo Diop (knee)

QUESTIONABLE: M Youssef Maziz (leg), 

SUSPENDED: D Kosi Thompson (yellowcard accumulation)

No surprises there, but good to see Maziz upgraded at least.  Also of note not this week but next, both Farkhi and Frederick have been called up by their national teams (Israel and T&T)  so they won't be available in LA.

Its time to see what the new guys can do.  Yapi is not working as the striker and there's no next week for Farkhi, so throw him out there and see how long he can go.  Same with Whittaker.  The rest is fairly obvious.

Prediction: 1-0 win, goal by Aaronson.  That score seems to be our home MO, why predict anything else?