Home Opener!

A home game!  With fans!  Yes, the Rapids are back in Commerce City tomorrow night!  I won't be present (I got my second vaccine on Tuesday so I'm not through my 14 day waiting period yet) but about 8000 fans will be!  If you can't make it well, you know the TV realities.  

We're set to play, wait, who are these guys?  Austin?  When did they get a team?  Seriously though, this will be Matthew McConaughey FC's second ever game and apparently about 200 of their fans will be showing up tomorrow.  I'm expecting Rosenberry and Barrios to have a great match attacking Austin's left side, because as we know Austin is allright, allright, allright....

what, nothing for that joke?  Ok, moving on.  The injury report actually got worse this week:

OUT: D Steven Beitashour, M Braian Galvan

QUESTIONABLE: D Lalas Abubakar, Sam Vines

Which might explain why Beitashour didn't start last week.  The good news is that both Abubakar and Vines were featured in the photos from training in the stadium today, so hopefully they'll be available. Austin will have two players out to injury.  My starting XI guess:

I think Vines, with his preseason work in Olympic qualifying, will be ready to start but Abubakar will need another week to get to full fitness.  He'll likely be available off the bench.  If Vines can't go we'll see Acosta again with Bassett in mdifield.

Prediction: 1-0 win, goal by Shinyashiki.  Austin didn't look very dangerous in attack, after we got a shutout on the road in Dallas I'm not too worried about giving up a goal at home.  But we haven't dialed in our shots yet so this will be a bit of a stressful of a home opening win, but we'll get the 3 points.