Thursday, February 8, 2018

New Shirt, New Player, But Still No Striker

Two announcements from the Rapids today.  First the 2018 home jersey was unveiled:
Pretty straight forward.  Paired with light blue shorts and the burgundy socks it will look good on the field.  If I needed a new jersey I'd be happy to pick this one up but right now I've got a few others in the queue, namely Blackburn's road jersey and a Swedish National Team jersey before the World Cup.

One interesting note, with this burgundy kit the Rapids will have played in burgundy for 12 seasons.  They played in the original green for 7 seasons and the black and blue for 4 seasons, which means as of this year we've played in burgundy for a majority of our existence.

The other announcement was a bit of surprise, we traded our 2020 2nd round draft pick to KC for goalkeeper Andrew Dykstra.  He's 32 year old journeyman keeper that's spent time with Chicago, DC, and KC, as well as some USL teams, with 34 MLS starts in his career.

I'm a little surprised at this move as I expected that draftee Thomas Olsen had the inside track on the 3rd keeper spot.  This means that either Olsen isn't working out, or that this is the first move in a plan to trade MacMath.  Dykstra could be a backup keeper, he's done that successfully in his career, and MacMath is a nice trading chip for a team looking for a big upgrade at striker.  I kind of hope that's the plan because if we're keeping both Howard and MacMath I'd rather we take a shot on Olsen or another young keeper that might develop over Dykstra, who will probably never play a game this season barring simultaneous injuries to MacMath and Howard.

Signed Players:
* = international
HG = homegrown
DP = designated player

GK Andrew Dykstra
GK Tm Howard - DP
GK Zac MacMath
D Edgar Castillo
D Kip Colvey
D Mike da Fonte
D Kortne Ford - HG
D Marlon Hairston
D Eric Miller
D Axel Sjoberg
D Tommy Smith*
D Jared Watts
D Danny Wilson*
D Deklan Wynne*
M Bismark Adjei-Boateng*
M Stefan Aigner*
M Michael Azira
M Johan Blomberg*
M Shkelzen Gashi* - DP
M Sam Hamilton
M Ricardo Perez - HG
M Jack Price*
M Dillon Serna - HG
F Dominique Badji*
F Caleb Calvert - HG
F Jack McBean

Unsigned Draftees:
GK Thomas Olsen
F Niki Jackson
F Alan Winn

Trialists:
D Joel Johnson
M Enzo Martinez

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I just saw that Winn is gone to Nashville. FO is making pretty clear statements about how it values the draft.