Everyone is up in arms about the Conor Casey sending off on Saturday. It was not a great call but I don't think it was actually the worst one of the night. We have to remember that we always think that calls that do not go in our favor are always thought of as worse than calls that benefit us. Click to continue reading...

Well, maybe it's a bit broken now. Defensive lapses in the opening 20 minutes of this game put paid to the Colorado Rapids' recent unbeaten streak. Brian Ching showed his class as he scored twice in the opening seven minutes, the Rapids both times giving him far too much room. A poor clearance from goalkeeper, Preston Burpo, in the opening minutes found its way to onrushing Houston forwards and the defense could not keep up with Ching. Click to continue reading...

LA coach Bruce Arena: "In the last five years of this league the L.A. Galaxy have the least amount of points of any team." See Nick Green's article in the Los Angeles Galaxy section.

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Contributing more fuel to my theory that soccer is the Sport Of The Internet in America, Jack Bell of the New York Times sites this stat in his Extra Time column today: "According to an analysis of more than 100 million blogs, message boards, and postings on social Web sites performed with Zeta Interactive's RelevantNoise software technology, MLS was third worldwide in the total volume of soccer posts, at 16 percent. Click to continue reading...

It was a wild ending but my team the Minnesota Thunder were elimindated 5-4 by Vancouver in the first round of the USL-1 playoffs last night. Damn it all. See details in the USL-1 section.

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A big shout out to the fantastic Highbury pub in Milwaukee, where I spent a great Saturday morning. Click to continue reading...

Colorado Rapids midfielder Conor Casey has been named MLS Player of the Week for Week 27 after bagging a hat trick against the New York Red Bulls on Saturday, including the game-winning goal in second-half stoppage time. In winning the honor, Casey's offensive outburst overshadowed other sensational individual performances by the likes of Yura Movsisyan and Darren Huckerby, who scored two goals each over the weekend. Click to continue reading...

Top stories: Americans sitting in Europe, our English teams losing, Wake Forest clamping down on top spot in college, and top seeds winning in the USL playoffs.

OUR TEAMS

Everton (2-3-1, 14th in Premier League): 0-2 loss in the big derby with Liverpool.

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Everyone got their breath back? The final whistle blew almost 24 hours ago and I can't seem to shake this game out of my mind. The image of Mehdi Ballouchy's fantastic cross onto Conor Casey's outstretched boot in the final minutes of the game remains largely fixed. It was not that the defenses were so poor on both sides. Click to continue reading...

Colorado held New England to a 1-1 draw at home after taking the title from the Chicago Fire the week before. New England still has only one road victory as a challenger in the UMLSCC.

This week Colorado traveled to New York and history would say that NY should walk away with the title. The Rapids were 0-2-7 (WDL) when playing on the road as the champions. Click to continue reading...

The Colorado Rapids, unbeaten in the past three games, are now headed to New York for a tough game on the turf against the Red Bulls. Much has been made of the consistency of the team in those recent games. Unfortunately, injuries mean there will have to be some changes in tomorrow night's line-up. Click to continue reading...

There's a nice write-up about Bouna Coundoul in the Denver Post (link below) and how he is caught between a rock and a hard place both at home and with the Senegal national team. He's saying all the right things about being happy as a deputy to Preston Burpo but it is clear how frustrated he is at being on the bench both for the Colorado Rapids and Senegal. Click to continue reading...

Crikey! Didn't we just play a game? The Colorado Rapids have a very quick turnaround this week and will be off tomorrow for the game on Thursday night against Dallas. Unfortunately, that gives me no time to get up to training due to work commitments to suss out camp mood and get an idea of the line-up. Click to continue reading...

The Colorado Rapids go into Friday night's Rocky Mountain Cup showdown against Real Salt Lake with what amounts to a mini injury crisis. Pablo Mastroeni and Terry Cooke, two of the most influential players in the team, will not make the trip due to hamstring injuries. Click to continue reading...

So much hope about a new era but the Colorado Rapids crashed to a 3-0 defeat against DC United on Saturday. After going into the game almost like a line of combat soldiers, we lost the battle. The question is have we lost the playoff war also?
The team was in the game for the first 40 minutes or so. Click to continue reading...

If you look at the Colorado Rapids website, you'll see this weekend's projected formation lined up looking like some Roman gladiators. The formation is listed as basically two lines of four and five in defense and midfield with lone striker,Conor Casey, up front. Here is the link to the website. Click to continue reading...

Thursday, August 14th:

Los Angeles Galaxy 2 - Chivas USA 2

LA – Landon Donovan 14 (Chris Klein) 8'
CHV – Atiba Harris 2 (Paulo Nagamura) 50'
CHV – Paulo Nagamura 2 (Atiba Harris) 63'
LA – Alan Gordon 4 (Ante Jazic) 92'+
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Saturday, August 16th:

FC Dallas 1 - Columbus Crew 2

FCD – Jeff Cunningham 4 (Adrian Serioux) 35'
CLB – Brian Carroll 1 (Guillermo Barros Schelotto, Alejandro Moreno) 62'
CLB – Brad Evans 3 (Guillermo Barros Schelotto) 65'
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Saturday, August 16th:

DC United 1 - Chicago Fire 0

DCU – Fred 2 (Jaime Moreno) 27'
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Saturday, August 16th:

Real Salt Lake 3 - Houston Dynamo 4

RSL – Yura Movsisyan 1 (Robbie Findley) 3'
HOU – Brian Mullan 2 (Brad Davis) 16'
RSL – Javier Morales 4 (unassisted) 25'
HOU – Brian Ching 9 (Brian Mullan, Craig Waibel) 29'
HOU – Ricardo Clark 1 (unassisted) 35'
HOU – Nate Jaqua 1 (Brian Ching, Brad Davis) 42'
RSL – Kenny Deuchar 3 (Robbie Findley, Javier Morales) 80'
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Saturday, August 16th:

Kansas City Wizards 1 - Colorado Rapids 2

COL – Conor Casey 4 (Terry Cooke, Mehdi Ballouchy) 11'
KC – Michael Harrington 1 (unassisted) 44'
COL – Conor Casey 5 (unassisted) 47'
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Saturday, August 16th:

New England Revolution 0 - San Jose Earthquakes 4

SJ – Ronnie O'Brien 2 (Francisco Lima, Ramiro Corrales) 11'
SJ – Ryan Johnson 4 (Scott Sealy, Ronnie O'Brien) 71'
SJ – Scott Sealy 3 (Darren Huckerby, Nick Garcia) 76'
SJ – Ronnie O'Brien 3 (Darren Huckerby) 87'
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Sunday, August 17th:

Toronto FC 0 - New York Red Bulls 2

NY – Mike Magee 3 (Seth Stammler) 37'
NY – Juan Pablo Angel 7 (Dane Richards, Jorge Rojas) 92'+ Click to continue reading...

The Wizards continue to have their trouble on the road as they put in a lackluster effort and fell in Colorado 2-1. Overall, the performance was another poor one, as a struggling Colorado side dominated the Wizards for long stretches of the game.

Colorado were pressuring from the beginning and were able to get the opening goal through Conor Casey. Click to continue reading...

Acting head coach Gary Smith punched the air as the referee blew for the 90 minutes. It sure was mighty relief for the Colorado Rapids organization and their fans that the team finally managed to score some goals and eke out a win against a frequently dangerous Kansas City side. Click to continue reading...

Note: Attempted posting this yesterday before leaving Colorado, but Blogger held me up for some reason. Here's what I said...extra apologies now for the lack of posts.

Apologies for the lack of posts over the last two days. Friday, travel kept me busy and there were technical difficulties last night. Click to continue reading...

Wow, a road victory, a honest to goodness road victory. Toronto defeated Colorado 1-0 today. A great goal from Chad Barrett very close the end of the first half and then a rollicking, nail biter in the eventful second half were the key ingredients.
Watching TFC as visitors on television has become a battle between hope and history. Click to continue reading...

The Colorado Rapids face international opposition for the second time in six days at Dick's Sporting Goods Park tomorrow. OK, it is an MLS game against Toronto rather than the likes of the EPL's Everton but there is more than national pride at stake here. This is a very important game for the Rapids who really need to win here and against Kansas City next weekend to boost playoff chances. Click to continue reading...

Lost in the shadow of Matt Reis' MVP-like season, as well as Jon Busch's comeback player of the year-like season, has been the extremely solid season being put in by Columbus goalkeeper Wil Hesmer, who has done his part to make Crew fans stop counting the days until Brad Friedel returns.

Click to continue reading...

The value of hard work and the value of a deep roster. A week may be a long time in politics, as they say. A few weeks may actually be a very short time in professional sport. Last month wasn't looking great for two very skillful players on the Colorado Rapids team. At the beginning of July, both Mehdi Ballouchy and Herculez Gomez were wondering whether they would be able to find their way back into the starting XI. Click to continue reading...

The facts of this game? The Colorado Rapids managed a 2-2 draw, again showing that this is not a team that gives up easily, having gone down 2-1. In so doing, the Rapids extended their unbeaten run to three games in the MLS. The truth is that our attacking play was so much better than that of FC Dallas that we should have won this game. Click to continue reading...

(Apologies for this post getting up several days late. It was supposed to run in mid-week but a technical glitch caused it not to be posted.)

What happens when a team that can't win two in a row faces a team that can't win?

You get a tie.

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Recap of this weekend's games in Major League Soccer which saw two MLS shown red cards. Earthquakes 1, Colorado 1 Ryan Johnson's second-half goal broke a long scoring drought for the last place San Jose Earthquakes, but Conor Casey scored minutes later to lift the Colorado Rapids into a 1-1 tie Saturday. Click to continue reading...

The hex is broken. The Colorado Rapids finally got at least a point after going down a goal. In eight previous games this season, six of them on the road, the Rapids have lost when conceding the first goal. Today, against the San Jose Earthquakes, they sure enough conceded the first goal but a header from Conor Casey in the 70th minute from a Terry Cooke cross rescued a point. Click to continue reading...

I'm watching the San Jose-Colorado match and I saw two things that I you don't see every day:

- San Jose scored a goal
- Frank Yallop got sent off

First, the goal. Ryan Johnson smashed a diving header past Bouna Coundoul with about 30 minutes left in the game. Unfortunately for the 'Quakes, Conor Casey equalized about five minutes after. Click to continue reading...

The relatively inexperienced midfield for the Colorado Rapids may have to inject a little more cynicism into its play to avoid making the kinds of mistakes that saw the team allow a similarly inexperienced Columbus player last week waltz through it and score the winning goal. Goalkeeper, Bouna Coundoul, said in this week's radio show, "From The Pitch", that Emmanuel Ekpo should have been fouled further up the field. Click to continue reading...

The Colorado Rapids once again let themselves down in front of goal, failing to finish off any number of chances as they struggled to a scoreless draw against the Houston Dynamo last night. Many of those chances did fall to Omar Cummings but the Jamaican is finding it tough to net right now and he probably fears his starting place is under threat, only helping him to get more anxious in front of goal. Click to continue reading...

OK, bit of a corny headline but there is a good opportunity for the Rapids to vent all their frustrations of the past two weeks on the Dynamo this weekend. Coach, Fernando Clavijo, is very confident he will have the squad to roll the Texans over. Back comes a very solid defense with Ugo Ihemelu returning from pseudo international duty with Canada and Facundo Erpen returning from suspension. Click to continue reading...

Let's hope there are stout hearts in those young Colorado Rapids players and that they don't get so afraid at BMO Field come Saturday evening. Those crazy Canadian fans, the difficult surface, questionable refereeing decisions. All these will no doubt come into play on Saturday against Toronto and the inexperienced players could be the ones tested the most. Click to continue reading...

Just when I thought I could get away with one post today, the Major League Soccer Players' Union goes and releases the salary numbers...commie bastards...

Having rambled way down below - they say people resort to verbosity to cloak ignorance, y'know - I'll keep things short here. I can handle .

Click to continue reading...

...hmm, that title isn't quite what I'm going for...and I can't link to some of the statistical stuff cited below because MLSnet.com was gummed up and lame at time of typing.
Today, we get to the failing that doomed the Colorado Rapids's 2007: namely, the ever-sputtering offense. If Toronto FC hadn't suffered eternities of incompetence in front of goal, the Rapids 29 goals scored would have set the all-time low-scoring mark for the 30-game era in Major League Soccer (MLS).

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View From The Couch (VftC) pieced together a plausible starting XI for the Colorado Rapids from a report on an intra-team scrimmage. This came, as all communications regarding the Rapids, from official sources. By combining what looked closer to the first team from the two scrimmage squads with who he expects would take their place [. Click to continue reading...

I was feeling optimistic about the Colorado Rapids in 2008. Then in cleaning up some drafts for blog posts I ran across this quote from Rapids VP Jeff Plush. It was made going into the 2007 season. McDonald was dropped before mother's day if I remember correctly. Vanney was in, looked like he might have been giving the back line some leadership and then promptly shipped off to DC United. Click to continue reading...