Home Town vs. Current Town

35 plus years ago I was born in Seattle, and I lived in the greater Seattle area for the first 28 and a half years of my life. Alas, when MLS started Seattle didn't get a team, local boys Chris Henderson and Marcus Hahnemann went to Colorado, and thus I'm a Rapids fan. Now I live in Denver.

Tomorrow, my tow cities face off at the Dick. The Rapids have yet to beat the MLS version of the Sounders in either the league or Open Cup play. Kickoff is a 7pm, with the Supporters Group tailgate starting in the West lot (new location for this game only)at 5pm.

Injury Report:

OUT: DF Kosuke Kimura (L ankle stress fracture); MF Ciaran O'Brien (L hip sprain); FW Ross Schunk (R ACL tear); DOUBTFUL: None; QUESTIONABLE: DF Julien Baudet (L knee sprain); MF Jamie Smith (R hamstring strain); PROBABLE: DF Scott Palguta (L calf strain)

DC has 6 players out or questionable, including two of their better defenders. Having Koz, Baudet, and Palguta on the injury list is a bit of a concern, if none of them can start it leaves our back line very thin. I'm going to guess that Baudet is good enough to play, since he played the full game on Wednesday, but if none of them can go we're looking at Holody or something. My lineup guess:

Pickens

Wynne - Moor - Baudet - Earls

Pablo - Larentowicz

Cummings - Ballouchy - Clark

Casey

I really hope Clark has won the left back spot from Thompson, because Wells hasn't looked great the last couple of games. If Baudet isn't available though, we might see something like a 3-6-1 with Thompson or Moor taking the extra spot in midfield.

Key To Look For: Freddy Ljungberg vs. Pablo. Ljungberg has lost focus this year, spending more time complaining to the officials than playing. If Pablo can get in a couple of hard but legal tackles on Freddy early in the game he'll probably go down the same road, which will take away the Sounders midfield general.

Prediction: 2-0 win, goals by Conor Casey and Omar Cummings. Seattle's offense has been woeful this season, and I think our defense can finally get back-to-back shutouts. Seattle's defense has big gaps due to injury and I think the Dynamic Duo will take advantage.

Thanks, That Was Fun

The Rapids defense decided to take the night off, and combined with our B offense (Amarikwa as a lone striker) the Rapids bowed out of the USOC before actually making it to the full competition by losing 3-0 to NY's reserve squad. This is the third year in a row the Rapids have lost in the final play-in game, so that's one more trophy we can't win. Drew Moor had an awful game, seemingly marking nobody on the first two goals and the unmarked man scored both, then losing the ball in a dangerous spot that let the Red Bulls player waltz right into goal on the third.

On to the league match on Saturday. Resting the likes of Casey, Pablo, Pickens, and 'Cummings (for all but 20 minutes) better have been worth it.

Final USOC Play-In Tomorrow

The Rapids will get their first look at Red Bull Arena tomorrow as they take on NY for a spot in the U.S. Open Cup. The winner of tomorrow's game will enter with the other MLS teams in the Round of 16, while the loser is home for the season. In the Rapids case it would be the 3rd season in a row they would be eliminated one step from the full Cup.

The good news is that New York will be streaming the game live on their website. Kickoff is 6pm Mountain.

Its hard to really preview this game, since teams often use reserves or a mixture of reserves and starters. Gary Smith has said that he wants to win it though, so hopefully we'll see more starters than reserves. NYRB played Juventus over the weekend and has a game this coming weekend, so there's a bit of fixture congestion for them (though the friendly is hardly the same as a league match), while the Rapids have been off for a week and a half.

Overseas Wrap-up

I dropped the weekly update on my non-MLS teams, but now that their seasons are over I thought I would do a final wrap-up of where they finished this year.

Queen of the South: Queens had quite an odd season as they had a long break in mid-winter as the heavy storms in the UK made it impossible for them to play their scheduled games. This lead to a congested fixture list int he second half of the season. The Doonhamers weathered it well though, but nobody in the 1st Division could stand up to the just-relegated Inverness Caledonian Thistle. Thistle won the league, and promotion, by 12 points. QoS won the tiebreaker over Ross County for 4th place, 17 points behind the leaders, but only 5 points behind 2nd place Dundee. Next year Falkirk drops down from the SPL and Stirling Albion and Cowdenbeath get promoted from the Second Division to replace Ayr United and Airdrie United. Not having the long road trip to Inverness should help a bit.

Blackburn Rovers: The Rovers improved significantly from last year. After the season got started they were never in real threat to be relegated. Despite being shellacked by the 'Big 4' Blackburn held its own against the rest of the league and hovered around mid-table for most of the season. The high point of the season was probably the two victories against their East Lancashire rivals Burnley, which lead to Burnley being relegated by 5 points. They also beat Bolton both times, another rival. Finishing the season with two victories moved them up to 10th place, giving the team something to build on for next year.

CD Tenerife: CDT got a lesson in La Liga this year. They struggled in their first season in the top flight and spent most of it just inside or outside the relegation zone. The team never really got a good run going, and didn't have much to hang their hat on. Still with two weeks to play their chances of survival were still looking fairly good, with a game at home against a weaker team before ending at 3rd placed Valencia, who had nothing to play for. Unfortunately they only got 1 point out of the 2 games and were relegated by 2 points. They'll return to the Segunda Division next season hoping for a quick rebound back to the top. Hopefully they'll return stronger.

Melbourne Victory: Melbourne continued to be one of the best teams in the Australian A-League. They constantly battled with their rivals, Sydney FC. for first place. The season ended with the Victory playing in Sydney with the regular season title on the line. A win or a draw for Melbourne gave them the title, a loss gave it to Sydney. Unfortunately Sydney won 2-0 to take the championship, but the Victory would look for revenge in the playoffs. The two teams were matched up in the first round and Melbourne won the first leg and the two teams battled to a draw int he second leg. This advanced Melbourne to the Grand Final, while Sydney had to get through the losers bracket. They did, and for the 4th time in 5 weeks the two teams met for the A-League Championship. Victory legend Archie Thompson was injured early in the first half and that may have been the difference as the teams had to settle it on penalties. With a reduced strike force for Melbourne Sydney took advantage, winning 4-2 on penalties and leaving their rivals with nothing to show for their great season.

Rapids Get First Win In DC This Millennium

The Rapids did something they hadn't done since 1999, won in the nation's capital. Unfortunately I'm not sure they played significantly better than they did in their prior two 1-0 losses. The breaks just went Colorado's way Saturday night.

As it has for the last 3 games the Rapids 4-5-1 formation allowed the Rapids to control possession for long stretches. Unfortunately once again they could not turn the possession into goals. Colorado did not have a shot on goal in the first half, with their best chance being a great cross to Casey's head that somehow Conor whiffed on, not even forcing the DC keeper to sweat.

The second half started much as the first, with more possession with no shots. Finally at the midway point Ballouchy decided to take it upon himself and dribbled a ball into the box, rounded a defender, and beat the keeper near post in a nice display of skill. After that the gates seemed to open for the Rapids chances. Both Clark and Ballouchy hit the posts on shots and Cummings had a goal stolen from him by a miracle kick save from DC's keeper. The continued pressure was enough to protect the 1 goal lead and get Colorado the 3 points.

My key to the game was the ability of the forwards to turn our possession into good chances. It didn't happen. Casey had on real good look and blew it, and Cummings only had the one good look (which admittedly would have beat the keeper 9 out of 10 times). Once again the forwards were bailed out by the midfielders, like they were in New England a month ago.

Other Observations:

• The rapids have now won more games on the road in their first 5 this year than they won all of last year.
  
• The defense looked pretty lax most of the game. They had no problem stopping DC's attacks, but then they were happy to sit on the ball or wait for the ball to come to them, which led to a number of close calls.
• I've heard third-hand that there's no health problem with Colin. If so, why isn't he starting? Clark came on for Thompson right after the goal, and suddenly the Rapids were much more dangerous.
• Cummings is needed on the right because we don't have a better option, but it really hurts his ability to get to goal.
• We played well enough to beat DC, but DC is a bad team. We still need to do better to beat Seattle and Columbus, our next opponents.

Player of the Game: Mehdi Ballouchy. Its not often that he has that good of a game so I have to give him the nod. Honorable mention to Marvell Wynne who looked great back on the outside.