All Quiet

I know with the season starting that its usually time to ramp up Rapids coverage.  So far this year though there's been nothing to talk about.  No rumors, no interesting trialists, nothing.

If and/or when there's news we'll talk about it but I'm not going to just churn out posts with no real news.

Update On Camp Trialists

Daniel Boniface came through with the info on the 4 trialists in camp.  I was wrong in my earlier post tonight, Epstein is not one of the Academy goalkeepers.  In short (see Boniface's article for the full details):

GK Cody Mizell (Charlotte, played with Atlanta and Tampa in NASL)
GK Connor Gavigan (Creighton, played in the Rapids Academy)
GK Kai Likewise (Rapids U-18 Academy team)
M Jun Marques Davidson (Charlotte, spent time in MLS with Vancouver)

The fact that we have 3 extra keepers in camp makes me wonder if there's a possible GK deal int he works for Berner or (more likely) MacMath.

Here's the updated roster:

Signed Players:
GK John Berner
GK Tim Howard - Designated Player
GK Zac MacMath
D Marc Burch
D Bobby Burling
D Dennis Castillo - International
D Kortne Ford - Homegrown
D Eric Miller
D Axel Sjoberg - International
D Jared Watts
D Mekeil Williams - International
M Bismark Adjei-Boateng - International
M Micheal Azira
M Sam Cronin
M Marlon Hairston
M Ricardo Perez - Homegrown
M Dillon Powers
M Juan Ramirez - Designated Player, International, On Loan
M Dillon Serna - Homegrown
F Dominique Badji - International
F Caleb Calvert - Homegrown
F Kevin Doyle - International
F Shkelzen Gashi - Designated Player, International
F Alan Gordon

Unsigned Draftees:
D Liam Callahan
M Sam Hamilton
F Peguy Ngatcha
F Jaime Siaj

Unsigned Trialists/Academy Players:
GK Connor Gavigan
GK Kai Likewise
GK Cody Mizell
M Jun Marques Davidson

Conor Casey, Rapids Assistant Coach!

The Rapids made it official today, announcing Conor Casey as their new assistant coach.  Casey is, quite simply, the best striker to ever play for Colorado and hopefully some of that success will rub off on the team's attack next season.  He joins Mullan, Smith, and (obviously) Pablo as players from the MLS Cup winning team who have been hired as coaches by the Rapids.

In other news the Denver Post''s Daniel Boniface was out at camp today and reported everyone was present except Azira (with Uganda at the African Cup of Nations) and Adjei-Boateng (hasn't arrived yet).  He also said there were two trialists from the Charlotte Independence and two goalkeepers from the Academy training with the team.  I'm assuming one of the keepers was Andrew Epstein, currently a junior and starter for the national champion Stanford Cardinal.  He's expected to get a homegrown player offer from the Rapids after he graduates.  The other three are unknown but Boniface hopes to get names soon.

Rapids Sign Adjei-Boateng From Manchester City

The long rumored deal to bring Bismarck "Nana" Adjei-Boateng to Colorado is done.  Nana was signed using TAM which means he's making DP money and/or his transfer fee puts him in the DP range but his salary cap hit is bought down to standard max salary levels.  One report out of Norway has it as a 4 year deal with a team held 5th year option.

Adjei-Boateng came out of Ghana's Right to Dream Academy where he was signed to Man City's youth squad at 17.  When he turned 18 he was loaned to Norway's Stromgodset where he's played since 2012.  In that time he made 86 appearances, scoring 16 times and getting the assist on 6 other goals.  Primarily used as a central midfielder at 22 he's a great signing for the future.

That said, I don't see him as this year's replacement for Jermaine Jones like many other Rapids fans.  The Norwegian league is seen as a lower league than MLS and his goal and assist to game ratio is almost identical to Badji's in MLS.  While I'm really excited to see what kind of player he'll be in 2019 I'm not expecting huge numbers out of him this year.  We're gong to need to find an offensive spark for 2017 still.

Here's the updated roster:

Signed Players:
GK John Berner
GK Tim Howard - Designated Player
GK Zac MacMath
D Marc Burch
D Bobby Burling
D Dennis Castillo - International
D Kortne Ford - Homegrown
D Eric Miller
D Axel Sjoberg - International
D Jared Watts
D Mekeil Williams - International
M Bismark Adjei-Boateng - International
M Micheal Azira
M Sam Cronin
M Marlon Hairston
M Ricardo Perez - Homegrown
M Dillon Powers
M Juan Ramirez - Designated Player, International, On Loan
M Dillon Serna - Homegrown
F Dominique Badji - International
F Caleb Calvert - Homegrown
F Kevin Doyle - International
F Shkelzen Gashi - Designated Player, International
F Alan Gordon

Unsigned Draftees:
D Liam Callahan
M Sam Hamilton
F Peguy Ngatcha
F Jaime Siaj

CONCACAF Champions League Changes

Today CONCACAF announced changes in the Champions League format starting with the 2017-18 cycle the Rapids have qualified for.  Instead of playing in a group stage this fall, MLS teams will move right to a 16-team knockout tournament held in Feb-May of 2018.  The 4 MLS qualifiers will be joined in the tournament by 4 Mexican teams, the Canadian champion, the 5 major Central American league champs (all but Belize and Nicaragua), the Caribbean Club Champion, and the winner of the fall 2017 CCL tournament.  That tournament will now be contested by the 2 best teams from Nicaragua, the champion of Belize, the 2nd and 3rd placed teams from the other 5 Central American countries, and 3 Caribbean teams.

Essentially this changes the CCL into a small countries tournament and large countries tournament.  The results of each year's tournaments will be factored in to seeding for future years so countries can move up to the large tournament or down to the small one depending on results.  The benefit of this is to reduce schedule crowding for bigger teams who are playing games against minnows that they are (largely) winning easily.  It also allows those smaller clubs to play reasonable competition and not get blown out regularly.

As noted both in the CONCACAF and MLS releases, these changes do not effect which teams have qualified for the next cycle, despite the MLS teams not starting play until after the 2017 qualifiers would be decided.  Instead of playing a 3 team group stage this fall with two home and two road games between August and October the Rapids will play their first CCL game as a home-and-home knockout in February of 2018.  That will actually help our schedule congestion this fall and hopefully, with a good draw, we'll see a beatable team in preseason next year.

This leaves MLS in an odd place though as teams who qualify for the CCL won't start playing in it for over a year.  I expect we'll see an announcement before the season starts that there will be no teams that qualify for CCL in 2017.  Then the qualifiers will return in 2018.  That will mean that the teams that were already announced as having qualified will play in in 2018 and thee teams that qualify will play in 2019 and so on.  This allows MLS to "catch up" while not pulling a CCL spot from an already qualified team.

Unrelated, we got confirmation of Alan Gordon's signing today.