Monday, March 28, 2011

First USOC Play-In Tomorrow!

The Rapids have a short turn around after Saturday's match as they are in the Chicago area tonight for their first U.S. Open Cup play-in game. The game is actually in Peoria. The winner of the match will face the winner of the San Jose/Portland/Chivas USA pod for a spot in the full USOC.

Meanwhile there's some news about player availability. Koz continues his bad month by getting shingles (and I may have to change my player of the game against Chivas if he played through that!) and Jamie Smith has migraines. Omar Cummings is still in Jamaica, but a airplane snafu kept Sanna Nyassi from joining the Gambian National Team and he'll be available tomorrow night.

The Rapids have 4 games in the two weeks starting tomorrow. Meanwhile Chicago has two, separated by 10 days. so I fully expect the Fire to field their regular starting XI while Colorado puts out a full set of reserves. While I would love to see the Rapids take a stronger lineup to Chicago I can understand that the combination of fixtures, injuries, and international call-ups makes that difficult.

I'm not going to make a prediction on this game, as its difficult without knowing for sure what lineups to expect. My gut is saying the Rapids play well but end up losing though.


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