Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Borussia Moenchengladbach Coming To Colorado

Borussia Moenchengladbach is coming to Colorado in July. They'll be training and, as mentioned over at We Want Rapidman, look to be playing the Colorado Rapids.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Rapids - San Jose : The Aftermath

What a terrible game by the Rapids last night. It was a painful example of the cliche about a team not showing up to play. They didn't last night and instead of getting 3 realitvely easy points at home, they gave San Jose their first franchise win. Nick at We Want Rapids Man was right about confusion in the Rapids back line. Keel and Erpen struggled to get things right quite a few times. It cost the Rapids their first goal. And it could've been another one or two in the first half if not for Bouna. The real stinker last night for defense was Jose Burciaga. Jose's off night was compounded at half-time when Clavijo opted for a a 3-5-2. When the Rapids traded for the Burciaga we all knew there would be times when he was a defensive liability. Seeing him with 3 in the was horrifying. He was being constantly beat. With 3 in the back he wasn't able to get some extra cover other than Colin Clark coming back. That in turn made it difficult for Colin to get forward. Which brings me to Clavijo. Rumor had it going into the game he was going to tinker with tactics and the lineup. After the New England game we could see why. The team did nothing offensively in the 2nd half other than LaBrocca's goal (off a nice cross from Burciage? Or was it Clark?). In their first 3 games they didn't make much use of Christian Gomez. The tinkering though didn't appear to result in an improvement. The Rapids were still playing too many long balls out of the back, Gomez was still not getting the ball and seeing Burciaga in a 3-5-2 left me wondering if Clavijo's actually paid attention to Burciaga's previous 7 years in the MLS. Is Clavijo actually capable of coaching well in the MLS? His history says no. Last night has many of us wondering why we should have hope that this year is going to be any different than the last 3 with Clavijo in charge. Is this making too much from one off night from the team?