Highlights: Home Opener: March 4th against NE Expansion Visit: March 18th against Minn 4th of July opponent: Seattle Expansion trips: April 23rd to Minn, June 24th to ATL RMC matches: Home April 15th and Oct 15th (home finale), in Sandy Aug 26th
KC away on Sunday - Bad Orlando away on Saturday - Good Salt Lake Away, during the summer, on a Saturday - It's about goddamn ********ing time MLS. We'll actually be able to make it a huge road trip and I won't have the urge to give the league's scheduler a boot strait to the nuts. Salt Lake at home both early and late in the season - Good. Shit weather potential, and a Sunday game, will increase the chance of their travel group being embarrassingly small. It's nice they have to deal with a crap away day schedule for a change.
Our 3 extra games are against FSL, Dallas, and Vancouver. the first two were predictable and the third was a middle of the road option.
Worst part is that we will be gone for that weekend. Usually we miss 1 game. This year that means 2 games. Boo.
Well I always miss the 4th of July game. I'm bummed I'm going to miss Minnesota's first trip to Colorado, but it helps that I'll be seeing a game at Ewood Park that day instead.
So I was just analyzing the schedule for my blog and its actually a lot uglier than I thought on first pass. Some quotes from my blog: Full details here: http://view-from-the-couch.blogspot.com/2017/01/schedule-today-superdraft-tomorrow.html
I dug a little deeper into the fact that the Rapids are playing 17 games coming out of or going into short rest. The rest of the league averages 13 games where rest is a concern, from a low of 8 (Minnesota and KC) to our high of 17. However every team playing less than 14 games with short rest concerns is playing during a world Cup Qualifying window where they could potentially lose players. Colorado is not playing in one of those windows this year. The only exception is NYCFC which will only play 13 short rest games and will not play in an international window. The average number of short rest games for teams not playing in international windows is 15, with the low of 13 by NYCFC and a high of 17 by us. The second highest team is Seattle at 16. Not coincidentally both Seattle and Colorado have to leave dates open for CCL play. So our schedule is tough but we really didn't get screwed by the league. If its like last year teams have the choice to play through international windows or not and apparently Colorado chose not to. Given our high number of internationals (Howard, Gashi, Doyle, Azira, Williams, etc.) that's probably the right call.
I confess I am a sucker for big name players and expansion teams. My highlights are: June 21 verse LA; Sept 16 verse NYFC, and Sept 30th verse Montreal. Admittedly that last one isn't star riddled now the Drogba is done but they were great to watch in the play-offs. I should add Dallas April 1 to that list. We are away to Red Bull's, Toronto, Orlando, and Atlanta.
Oh I don't know, they still have Dos Santos and Cole (although I hate Cole); plus Llegitt and "the other" Boatang. I know they talk about getting younger, but they'll still get somebody I've heard of before the season starts. And their my 2nd favorite team, but that's partly because I hate everybody else. Edit: Oh, and how could I forget- they have Jermain Jones!
It's tough for me to get excited about the schedule when I'm setting the over/under on goals scored at 0.8 per game. RFO, please provide some sign of life.....
Your wish is my command: Reza Ghoochannejhad Nournia from SC Heerenveen? Sokratis Papastathopoulos from Borussia Dortmond? Lazaros Christodoulopoulos from AEK Athens?
How about Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink? But actaually I said big names, not long names. So anything would do.