March 21, 2007
Rapids play soccer!
Many Rapids fans are to be found hurting today with eye sprains, neck strains and finger pains after attempting to watch the Rapids take on famed side Valencia in Spain yesterday afternoon via live webcast.
It was like listening to an underwater tuba concerto while nursing a nasty hangover.
My eyes are still blurry, but it was worth it to occasionally get a peek at who our likely starting 11 lineup will be come April 7th!
Consensus is that Zach Thornton will be standing in all his statuesque glory in goal for us. Nothing personal, but I miss the Cannon.
Who else was there? Here's the official Rapids Lineup from the website (as there was much confusion for those of us using the "drunk driving simulator" to watch the game):
Zach Thornton
Dan Gargan (Chris Wingert 59)
Mike Petke (Stephen Keel 64)
Ugo Ihemelu (Colin Clark 69)
Greg Vanney
Terry Cooke
Kyle Beckerman
Jovan Kirovski
Herculez Gomez
Roberto Brown (Omar Cummings 61)
Nicolas Hernandez.
Final score: Valencia 4 : Rapids 3. Not bad, really, against an amazing team in prime form competing well against billion-dollar teams like Real Madrid.
My only commentary is that, yet again, we get a defender from LA who turns out to be more of a liability than an asset, causing more goals than he stops. Hope this improves.
Okay, two comments. From what I could tell on blur-o-vision, the two strikers we brought in to wow the crowd this year, Roberto Brown and Hercules Gomez, were invisible and Nico had a very productive game. Cookie had a trademark cross to Beckerman for an assist-goal combination hopefully indicative of what we'll see here in Colorado.
If you want more news on the game... the Denver Post has a little write-up on the game and the Rapids crack PR staff has the (assumed) slightly generous game recap.
Assistant Coach John Murphy puts up a good piece on the experience of playing in England and Spain.
Posted by BilFish at March 21, 2007 07:56 AM