Wet Game Forecast For BC Place

River whitecaps are better than ocean ones

When the Rapids face the Whitecaps you know that somebody's getting soaked.  In the first of our 3 meetings against them the Rapids make a trip to the Great White North.  The Rapids have never lost in Vancouver (all of one game) while they've never won in Toronto when facing Toronto, so western Canada is much more favorable to us.  Game time tomorrow is 5pm and the game is on Altitude.  Hopefully you can tear yourself away form the enjoyable Euro 2012 tournament.  Despite seeing my two favorites (Ireland and Sweden) eliminated the last two days I'm still having a good time watching it.

Injury Report:
OUT: MF Pablo Mastroeni (headache symptoms); DF Anthony Wallace (L Achilles tear)
DOUBTFUL: DF Marvell Wynne (R hamstring strain)
QUESTIONABLE: FW Omar Cummings (L ankle sprain)
PROBABLE: FW Conor Casey (R hamstring strain);  MF Ross LaBauex (sports hernia); MF Jamie Smith (R ACL tear)

Disciplinary Report:
SUSPENDED: DF Tyrone Marshall
SUSPENDED AFTER NEXT YELLOW: MF Jeff Larentowicz (1 game left for good behavior reduction)
SUSPENDED AFTER NEXT 2 YELLOWS: MF Jaime Castrillon

The injury report looks much better than it has recently.  Casey has been confirmed as travelling with the team, though with the turf in Vancouver and a game on Wednesday I only expected to see him as a sub if he plays at all.  Jamie Smith is also expected to be in uniform for the first time this season.  Vancouver is only missing 3 players so they're in better shape than we are.  My guess at the starting XI:

Cascio - Akpan

Castrillon - Larentowicz - Rivero - Mullan

Freeman - Palguta- Moor - Kimura

Pickens

I think the turf and short schedule will keep any less than 100% players out of the starting lineup.  We could see an Edu or Zapata start but I'm guessing Pareja tries to stabilize the lineup a bit'

Key To Look For: What's going to happen after a 2 week break?  There's going to be some rust combined with some unusual starters, will the team play as a unit?

Prediction: 2-1 loss, goal by Cascio.  I don't have much faith in this defensive unit to solve our ongoing problems, and without Casey and Cummings I don't think we can keep up.  Cascio is well rested and will get one from long-distance but the Rapids will lose.

George Retires

I'm going to divert to one of my other favorite sports, cycling, for a moment.  George Hincapie, one of the leaders not only in American racing but across the professional peloton, announced today that this will be his final season.  Hincapie has raced for 19 seasons, all with American teams (Motorola, Postal/Discovery, HTC-High Road, and BMC). and has set numerous records.  Some of the most impressive is that in 3 weeks he'll take the start line for his 17th Tour de France, and if he finishes he'll have finished 16 of them, both all-time records for a rider.  He's also led teammates to victory a record 9 times (all 7 of Lance Armstrong's wins, Alberto Contador in 2007, and last year Cadel Evans).  He's also set records by completing Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders 17 times.

Hincapie is a 5-time Olympian (every Olympics since 1992) and will find out this week if he'll be part of this summer's team for the road race in London.  He's been the U.S. road race champion 3 times (1998, 2006, and 2009).  He wore the yellow jersey for the first two days of the 2006 Tour de France by winning the prologue.  Last August he won the Queen Stage (Stage 2) in the first USA Pro Cycling Challenge, the stage that took the riders over both Cottonwood Pass and Independence Pass.

George expects to race twice more before retirement.  As mentioned, on June 30th he'll start his 17th Tour de France which can be seen live daily on the NBC Sports Network.  Then in August he plans to be here in Colorado racing the USA Pro Cycing Challenge again.  Its the end of an era in American cycling but he hands the reins over to a good young group of riders like Teejay Van Garderen, Andrew Talansky, and Boulder's own Peter Stetina.

If you're in Colorado get out and see Hincapie's final race in August.  Above is a picture of George giving me (in the Rapids jersey) an autograph my my wife (besides me) takes a picture.  This was in Steamboat Springs last August before Stage 5 of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge.  The picture was taken by Karen over at Pedal Dancer, who should be your source for all the important cycling news with a Colorado viewpoint.

Midseason Review

Technically midseason isn't until after the 4th of July game, but this long break seems to be a good time to assess where the team is at this point.  First lets start with my predictions from the beginning of the season:

The Rapids struggle to hold on to a playoff place all season and miss out on the playoffs in the last couple of games of the season.  The struggle to adapt to the new style early in the season will cost us just enough points to finish 6th in the West and just outside the postseason.

Well we're currently tied with Vancouver for the last two playoff spots, 4 points ahead of Chivas in 6th.  We've certainly dropped points we shouldn't have so far (@New England, LA) and they may come back to bite us.

Due to the unfavorable schedule of two games in Utah before FSL comes to Colorado for the final game the Rapids will lose the Rocky Mountain Cup again.

Being down 2 goals with another game still to go in Sandy isn't really pointing towards us winning hte RMC, but you never know what might happen.

Colorado makes a deeper than expected run in the U.S. Open Cup before losing on the road in the semifinals to another MLS team.

Well I was half right.  We lost on the road to a MLS team, but it was only in the 4th Round not the Semifinals.

Cascio will be the best rookie the Rapids have seen since Hunter Freeman in 2005.

I might have underestimated Cascio.  Freeman started 14 games and played over 1200 minutes in 2005.  Cascio has already started 12 games and played over 1000 minutes.  If tihs continues he might be the best rookie the team has ever had.

Casey comes back just as strong as before and gets at least 10 goals.

Not so far, but there's still time.  If he can bounce back from his current injury quickly he can get to double-digits.

Late in the year, but before the final game, Pablo announces his retirement.

With his current concussion issues, this seems even more likely now.

So I was off on the USOC and so far am off in Casey's return, but other than that my predictions are looking pretty good.  That's largely because this team seems to be exactly what it appeared to be before the season.  A new mixture of players, coaches, and tactics that hasn't figured out how to gel yet.  Breaking it down by position:

Goalkeeping: Pickens has been better than I expected.  I won't say he's been standing on his head but he's come up with some huge saves at times.  Ceus got one game against Tampa in the USOC that should have been a shutout.  Grade: A


Defense: Clearly the weak point on the team.  Injuries have shown we have no depth at center back and while we have 3 outside backs of roughly even quality none of them have played consistently well.  If we can get a stable 4 on the field we can do OK but any time we have to change the back line problems occur.  Grade: D+


Midfield: The Jekyll and Hyde part of the team.  Sometimes our new additions of Castrillon and Rivero look like maestros and sometimes they look overmatched in this league.  Larentowicz is doing his best to fill in for our sorely-missed captain, but he doesn't have Pablo's grit yet.  At times Mullan has played as more of a midfielder which has helped.  This was expected to be the area that saw the biggest upheaval with the change in tactics and personnel and their play reflects that.  Grade: C


Forwards: With the number of injuries to Casey and Cummings its hard to judge how well we've played.  Cascio has been great for a rookie, finding Hill as a super-sub has been a bonus, but Edu has been a disappointment so far.  Cummings has not played well in the Casey role of a 4-3-3 but when moved back into the traditional 4-4-2 he's found a bit of his old style.  Casey's injuries have kept him off the field most of the seaosn but you can see what he brings to the team when he's been in there.  Grade: C


Bench: Yuck.  Other than Hill as a super-sub there hasn't really been a strong presence in our subs and backup players.  Palguta, Thompson, Marshall, Edu, etc. have been mediocre as a whole.  Grade: C


Coaching: For a new coach Pareja has certainly said all the right things.  Papi realized the 4-3-3 wasn't working with our available personnel and shifted back to a 4-4-2.  He took the USOC as seriously as the injury situation would allow.  His moved to sign players when necessary have been quick, though many haven't paid off yet.  All thing considered he's actually done a bit better than I expected.  Grade: B-


Overall: A solid but unspectacular start to the season for the Rapids, which the 6-6-1 .500 record reflects.  The silver lining is that the record has been earned playing one of the toughest schedules in the league so far (I've seen it ranked between 1 and 3 in the last few weeks) while playing without up to 8 of the starters from MLS Cup 2010 due to injury.  For a team integrating as much new personnel as Colorado is that's actually more than just an average start.  Grade: B-

SporKCs Eliminate Colorado, Again

Not really the result we were hoping for as Sporting KC beat Colorado 2-0 last night.  A goal in the latter half of each half did the team in.  All credit to the Rapids, they send out a pretty strong lineup:

Cascio - Edu - Thompson

Castrillon - Larentowicz - Rivero

Freeman - Marshall - Palguta - Kimura

Pickens

That's about the best lineup we could play due to our injuries (Moor was a late scratch due to a tight hamstring).  Unfortunately without Cummings and Casey this team has no real creativity in attack.  They only got close once, and it went off the crossbar.  Meanwhile on the other end KC's first goal came after a great save by Pickens rebounded off the post and hit him in the back to roll over the line.  It was registered as an own goal but there's no blame to be placed on Pickens at all.

Its been 5 years since our last home match in this competition, its going to be at least one more.  The team is off until a week from Saturday when they're in Vancouver for the restarting of league play.

Rapids Face SporKCs For Spot In USOC Quarterfinals

Colorado left this afternoon for the short flight to Kansas City for tomorrow's U.S. Open Cup 4th Round game. Game time is 6:30pm and there will supposedly be a stream of the game available on the Rapids website though exact details have not been announced. They also have not announced the travelling roster yet, but they did post a picture of Kimura and Freeman boarding the bus. Our injured contingent of Pablo, Casey, Cummings, Mullan, and Wynne have also been ruled out.

The winner of this match will host the winner of tomorrow night's match between the PDL (4th tier) Michigan Bucks and the USL (3rd tier) Dayton Dutch Lions. That's the U.S. Ope Cup quarterfinal and will be held on June 26th. If the Rapids win it would be their first home USOC match in 5 years, hosting a team at least 2 tiers below them with a spot in the semifinals on the line.

That, combined with this being the only game between the USOC match last week (which many first-teamers didn't play in) and the game in Vancouver 11 days from tomorrow, is a good enough reason to run out the healthy first-team players. KC's coach Peter Vermes has said he plans to play his first team, though with international callups and injuries they're missing almost as many starters as we are. Oscar Pareja was a little more guarded today, saying that he plans to take the game very seriously but not committing to anything. With a spot in at least the quarterfinals on the line and a probable shot at the semifinals this game should be taken very seriously. As we saw last week hosting a lower league team is no guarantee of a win but the odds don't get much better than that. I know some fans have said this tournament isn't worth risking injury to our starters but I completely disagree, especially at this point.