Welcome To Preseason 2019!

Its official, preseason opened today out in Commerce City.  The team reported for physicals and such which will be conducted over the next couple of days, then the team will head to Bradenton, FL for a week of training and a scrimmage against Cincinnati FC.  As is traditional I'm going to track our roster and the trialists in camp over preseason, and the initial list is below.  Major credit to the Front Office for starting camp with 26 signed players and a rumor of a 27th, which might be an all time high for this team.

That 27th player, Kofi Opare, hasn't been announced but it heavily rumored.  He's a central defender originally from Ghana but who is now an American citizen.  After 4 years at Michigan he was drafted by the Galaxy and after a season and a half he was traded to DC.  He was a sometimes starter in Dc, making 65 appearances in 4.5 years, including 25 in 2017, but had his season cut short last year due to foot surgery.  He probably won't be 100% at the start of the season, but by the end of April he's expected to be fully recovered.  He'll be a good solid depth signing behind Ford, Smith, and Sjoberg if we do sign him.

Two interesting notes, the updated roster on the Rapids site no longer show Boateng or Shinyashiki as internationals which would get us down to 7 internationals, which matches the number of slots we have.

EDIT: Looks like I got confused, Boateng got his green card last year (he missed the second leg of the CCL because he couldn't travel to Canada) so that's not a new change. And we only have 6 international slots, not 7. I keep thinking we traded for another one for this year but we haven't yet. So we're one over even without Shinyashiki.

Roster as of 1/21/19

Goalkeepers:

Tim Howard - Designated Player

Clint Irwin

Andre Rawls

Defenders:

Kortne Ford - Homegrown Player

Sam Raben - Homegrown Player

Keegan Rosenberry

Axel Sjoberg

Tommy Smith - International

Sam Vines - Homegrown Player

Danny Wilson - International

Deklan Wynne

Midfielders:

Kellyn Acosta

Nana Boateng

Cole Bassett - Homegrown Player

Johan Blomberg - International

Benny Feilhaber

Shkelzen Gashi - Designated Player, International

Nicolas Mezquida - International

Sam Nicholson - International

Jack Price - International

Dillon Serna - Homegrown Player

Forwards:

Matt Hundley - Homegrown Player

Niki Jackson

Kei Kamara

Diego Rubio

Andre Shinyashiki

Trialists:

Marcello Borges - Defender

Jacob Hauser-Ramsey - Defender

Robbie Mertz - Midfielder