The Rapids have blanketed the heart of downtown Denver with burgundy and sky blue. It was a beautiful sight to see banners on Denver’s famous 16th Street Mall of Colin Clark, Conor Casey, Pablo Mastroeni, and Omar Cummings.
The banners said April 3rd, and we are all hoping that doesn’t turn out to be false prophecy.
Pat is one of my favorite dudes to interview. Great guy. Homes needs a haircut though.
An email to season ticket holders from the Rapids confirms they have sent goalkeeper Preston Burpo, defender Cory Gibbs, allocation money and their natural third round 2011 MLS SuperDraft pick to New England. In exchange the Rapids acquired the rights to midfielder Jeff Larentowicz and midfielder Wells Thompson in a trade with the New England Revolution, the club announced today.
Great move by our beloved Rapids. Check out the Rapids website for the upcoming press release.
According to Bmer916, and Kyle McCarthy, the Rapids are finalizing a deal to send Preston Burpo and Cory Gibbs to the New England Revolution in exchange for Jeff Larentowicz (M/D) and Wells Thompson (M).
On first glance this seems to be an excellent trade. Larentowicz shared the midfield with Shalrie Joseph, though he appears to be more of a defensive midfielder (I’m still hoping for a Xavi clone). Thompson is called a “two-footed, wide midfielder” on the Revs website, and might address the need for wingers as I posted earlier.
Gibbs has struggled with injury and keeping his place in the starting XI with the addition of Baudet and Moor. Burpo is a great backup, but with a healthy Matt Pickens and young Steward Ceus in the wings, this is a trade that needs to happen.
To the puzzlement of this Rapids fans, and apparently to some Toronto FC fans, the Rapids have traded Jacob Peterson. From the Rapids PR, Colorado received “allocation money in exchange for midfielder Jacob Peterson. Per club and league policies, financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.”
From a great writer to the north, The 24th Minute:
This is a bit of a head scratcher. Peterson is a wing player, which we all know Toronto needs, but he’s a wing player that blew his knee out in the final month of the 2009 season. In Colorado it was expected that he might not be ready to play until August.
For me this is a head scratcher as well. As I discuss in relation to my interview with Gary Smith, the loss of Peterson as our final healthy winger had profound implications on our tactics. After losing Clark and Peterson, we were de-clawed. If I’m not mistaken, we didn’t score a non-PK goal after September 12th, or at least we scored very few. How can trading away one of our wingers do anything but hurt an already susceptible role.
HOWEVER. El Capitan Gary Smith is undoubtedly aware of this, and in his interview discussed the affect of losing wingers. I can only assume this money will go towards acquiring another winger, of an ever greater quality. My hope is we will also pick up a solid backup, a true winger perhaps later in their career. Training Kimura on the job, late in the season, to be a winger was not effective.
Xavi (pre-cloning)
In the 90’s human cloning was extremely controversial. I think fans of the Colorado Rapids and/or the US Men’s National Team could agree an exception should be made.
Watching Xavi play this weekend versus Real Madrid, he was the spoke around which the Catalan wheel rotated. Even when they went a man down he directed the flow of play.
The Rapids have a powerful striking duo up top with Casey and Cummings. We have a less potent but still fairly dependable back line with the likes of Moor and Baudet.
What Colorado really lacks is a a creative presence like Xavi, a turret in the middle of the field firing balls forward.
With the US Men’s National Team the need for a Xavi-clone is one of possession. We lack a strong presence in the middle of the field that can absorb passes from the back, choose passes without cheaply giving up possession, do it repeatedly throughout all 90 minutes. Instead, at times, we sprint around like a track team defenders like Gooch fire optimistic balls downfield and hope one of our front men can get onto it.
These are not newly diagnosed issues. Surely the only option is to clone Xavi and get him ready for 2010.
For those of us who have the privilege to live in Denver, we know this is one of the most passionate sports cities in the world. I just signed the petition to bring the beautiful game’s biggest stage to one of the most beautiful cities: Denver. Sign the petition today:
International Soccer, Rapids News and Analysis, US National Team
This is a tough one to swallow. Just 6 weeks ago we looked like winning the West was still an option. But injuries to our wingers left us unable to generate any kind of offense. We went from one of the most powerful to one of the dullest offenses in a matter of weeks, almost completely unable to score if you take out penalty kicks.
I’m sure others will write effective breakdowns of what went wrong, but I’m just a fan with a blog and I’m major bummed. It wasn’t supposed to end like this, and now the task is to make sure that next year it doesn’t happen for the fourth straight year.
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