2025 Starts With A Deep-Freeze, Again

 

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends.  The 30th season of Rapids soccer starts tomorrow night with the CONCACAF Champions Cup match against LAFC in Commerce City.  A Commerce City that will, once again, be flirting with single-digit temperatures and negative wind-chill temps come kickoff tomorrow night.  The scheduling did us no favors either with kickoff at 8 instead of the normal 7:30 or even 7 due to having enough TV time for the earlier games.

Coincidentally enough KC is going to be dealing with the same artic storm, though in their case with snow, and they got their game postponed 24 hours to Wednesday.  Something that hasn't been offered to the Rapids for tomorrow night, or in 2022, or in 2018 when we dealt with this.  What's the difference?  Oh right, KC's opponent tomorrow is Inter Messi.  Anyway in the end it wouldn't make much difference, Wednesday would only be about 5 degrees warmer.

So, on to the game.  Unfortunately we got no favors in the draw, matching up with LAFC who has been a bit of a bogey team for us.  While we seem to play well enough against them on in Colorado, going to LA is a house of horrors.  So it means we really need to put up a good score tomorrow night.

I expect us to play compressed and make them drive the game at us, then hit them quickly on a counter.  Look for direct passes to Navarro trying to get behind the defense in the transition.  If LAFC gets a league though we'll have to open up and they've been deadly when we do that.

Ted Ku-DiPietro and Darren Yapi are both dealing with injuries and won't be available.  Sam Vines was expected to be ready for this one, but given the cold they may hold him out and not risk things.  Josh Atencio just got to Colorado today, he might be on the bench but he certainly won't start.  Otherwise the full team should be available.  I expect Awaziem to be the only new face we see in the starting XI though, otherwise I think you'll see a similar XI to what we played last season with Larraz getting the start next to Bassett in midfield and probably Calvin Harris as the winger opposite Cabral.

Prediction: 2-1 win, goals by Navarro and Bassett.  LAFC scores between our two goals but the one goal margin and giving up away goal puts us behind the 8-ball going back to LA.