Two defensive errors in the space of ten minutes late in the second half and this game was over. The Colorado Rapids lost 3-2 to the Galaxy in LA for the second time this season and now the playoff hopes are dimming. The Rapids simply have to go to Chivas next weekend back in LA and win so that there is not too much pressure in that last home game against Salt Lake. Click to continue reading...

Conor Casey suspended, Omar Cummings on international duty. Landon Donovan and David Beckham away internationally too. Add to the mix that the Colorado Rapids have only one half-fit true striker available and, at first glance, you have to wonder where the goals are going to come from in tomorrow's game against the LA Galaxy. Click to continue reading...

The Colorado Rapids have traded forward Herculez Gomez to the Kansas City Wizards in exchange for a fourth-round draft pick in the 2009 MLS SuperDraft, as well as a first-round pick in the '09 Supplemental Draft and an undisclosed sum of allocation money.Gomez, 26, was once one of the brightest young stars in the league when he was with the Los Angeles Galaxy. 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...

Or at least they are tied with the 2006 team as the worst ever.

By running their winless streak to 10 games with a 2-2 tie Saturday against the New England Revolution, the Galaxy tied the mark for the longest winless stretch in club history, first set in 2006 when the Galaxy went 0-8-2 from May 6 until June 24.

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...

Our friends over at the Denver Post, aka my co-host this week on the From The Pitch radio show, Brian Forbes, is reporting that the Colorado Rapids will probably continue to play three at the back rather than four for tomorrow's game against Kansas. The only difference is that such a threesome would include two players making season debuts in Mike Petke and new signing Cory Gibbs in place of the injured Ugo Ihemelu. Click to continue reading...

Bouna Coundoul, Pablo Mastroeni and Omar Cummings have all been called up for their respective national teams for international fixtures next week. Bouna will be off to Tripoli for a Senegal friendly against Libya while Cummings and Mastroeni will represent their countries in World Cup qualifiers against Canada and Guatemala respectively. Click to continue reading...

With all the shenanigans going on at the troubled LA Galaxy organization, there have also been stirrings this week surrounding the Colorado Rapids. Rumors of coaching changes at Dick's Sporting Goods Park, new players coming in, supporters clubs airing their grievances with the organization. Click to continue reading...

He didn't come, he didn't see and he certainly didn't conquer. The Colorado Rapids today traded college midfielder, Bruno Guarda, to FC Dallas. In return, they received multiple draft picks and an undisclosed allocation. The Rapids picked up Guarda in the MLS lottery last week and the much vaunted SMU star immediately became the subject of many approaches from other teams. Click to continue reading...

The Colorado Rapids have signed Brazilian midfielder, Bruno Guarda, through the league's lottery system. Guarda will take the roster position of the unfortunate Justin Hughes who has been placed on the season-ending injury list. Get better soon Justin! The Rapids have not had the best of luck with Brazilians. Click to continue reading...

A list of all penalties can be found on the league stats page (scroll to the bottom). However, on that page they don't list who earned and conceded the penalties like they used to a few years back. I've always missed that, so by looking through match reports I keep track of it myself.

With only 23 penalties given so far this season, there's not too much to notice on these lists. Click to continue reading...

It turns out that Ugo Ihemelu won't be a Canadian international after all. Deep down in this press release from the Canadian Soccer Federation amid news of the team's recent victory in a pre-World Cup qualifier is the fact that Ihemelu is on his way back to DSG Park following a FIFA decision he cannot play for Canada in the next World Cup. 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...

Canadian men's soccer coach Dale Mitchell has named the 19-players he will use for their 2010 World Cup qualifying matches against Saint Vincent & the Grenadines. The Canadians are looking to reach the finals for the first time since 1986.

Here is their roster:

GK (2): Greg Sutton (Toronto FC), Pat Onstad (Houston Dynamo)

D (6): Jim Brennan (Toronto FC), Mike Klukowski(Club Brugge KV), André Hainault (Sparta Praha), Ugo Ihemelu (Colorado Rapids), Adrian Cann (Vancouver Whitecaps), Richard Hastings(Inverness CT)

M (7): Adrian Serioux (FC Dallas), Julian de Guzman (Deportivo La Coruna),Paul Stalteri (Fulham FC),Marcel de Jong (Roda JC), Issey Nakajima-Farran (FC Nordsjælland), Atiba Hutchinson (FC København), Patrice Bernier (FC Kaiserslautern)

F (4): Tomasz Radzinski (Skoda Xanthi), Dwayne De Rosario (Houston Dynamo), Ali Gerba (FC Ingolstadt), Rob Friend (Borussia Mönchengladbach)

The Canadians play in Kingston this Sunday and then head home to Montreal for the second leg next Friday (20 June). Click to continue reading...

Colorado Rapids' general manager, Charles Wright, casually mentioned on the From The Pitch radio show last night that Rapids' defender, Ugo Ihemelu, had been called up to the Canadian national team. No mention of it on the Rapids' website which has been quick to point out that Pablo Mastroeni has remained in the US squad for this weekend's pre-World Cup qualifier against Barbados whom they also play next week. Click to continue reading...

Colorado Rapids 1-2 Chivas USA
The Bad News: The Rapids played sloppy soccer versus the goats. As Pablo aptly said at halftime, they "couldn't make a pass to save their life". They tried their normal attack strategy, but opportunities don't develop if you can't make passes. The only shots on goal the Rapids had were wild and unlikely to score.

Click to continue reading...

If you had told me before the game that a Rapids player would make a game losing error, literally the last person I would have guessed would have been Ugo Ihemelu.

Other then the Ugo error, the Rapids continued pretty much every trend from their past few games. They played good defense (exceptional in the case of Erpen and Kimura), contested the midfield, and had many opportunities which they didn't finish.

Click to continue reading...

One of the best problems a soccer team can have is having too many good players to field them all. That, and the ability to adapt the line-up to different opponents, is a sign of a good soccer team. The Rapids have both.

The biggest question on my mind as we await the game against Houston (with much anticipation, by the way) is who will be starting.

Click to continue reading...

Maybe this is what Colorado Rapids' coach, Fernando Clavijo, thinks to himself when he's on the seat of his Harley approaching Estes Park. How am I going to get the most out of my big players and what is the best formation to fit the biggest of them all, Christian Gomez? Click to continue reading...

Last year at Dick's, there were two guys with season tickets next to mine. They were from San Jose, so I wasn't surprised when one of them showed up to the All-Star Game wearing his old Earthquakes jersey (the ‘Quakes expansion was announced the day before). The conversation ...

Click to continue reading...

The San Jose Earthquakes have very dangerous forwards in Kamara and Glinton but, by the time they shoot at Bouna, their team may already be three down. I say this not in some marketing bravura but because Rapids coach Fernando Clavijo will be fielding a very attacking formation come the game Saturday night. Click to continue reading...

I read somewhere that Colorado Rapids head coach Fernando Clavijo made building a solid defensive corps his top priority for 2007 (here? Yep; it's toward the bottom). I'll leave it to others to explain how taking care of half of the overall equation brought to fruition Clavijo's "Three-Year Plan," but the numbers argue he succeeded in that specific aim: after surrendering 49 goals in 2006, and too often in bunches, the Rapids allowed a stingy 34 goals through 30 regular season games in '07.

Click to continue reading...

� (* The title gets explained all the way down at the bottom.� I bury leads with the best of 'em.) Not even a late goal could retrieve the game that struck me as the snoozer of Week 26.� Only the most rabid of partisans would call New England's win over the Rapids anything like just or [...] Click to continue reading...