I just glanced at the schedule again and just realized that our first 3 games are pretty damn hard. @ NY Portland Kansas City Those three teams had the best records in the League last year, and two of them have major silverware to show for it. We may be off to a bumpy start, regardless of how good our team might be or whoever ends up as the head coach.
Bleacher report has an article on things to watch for with the Rapids: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...son-preview-4-things-to-watch-for-this-season Better writing and research than the last write-up I saw. Particularly intriguing is their view of the coaching situation. Drawing a parallel to NY last year isn't a bad thing, I wouldn't mind ending up where they did.... rod
A few mistakes, but overall a really good statistical analysis. I like facts. http://americansocceranalysis.wordpress.com/2014/02/28/season-preview-colorado-rapids/
Deshorn Brown scored a brace as Jamaica get the win over the Bajan Tridents !— Official J.F.F (@jff_football) March 3, 2014
Just kidding. CORRECTION: thanks to @FlemingSport, we can confirm @strika09 scored 2nd of #Jamaica's 2 goals, not both. Curve ball from JFF Twitter feed.— Colorado Rapids (@ColoradoRapids) March 3, 2014
Twellman and Lalas preview the 2014 Rapids season... there's an old MLS commercial i hadnt seen before in it too. stuart scott makes a cameo haha http://espnfc.com/video/espnfc/video/_/id/1734821/league/usa.1?cc=5901
MLSoccer's profile of the Rapids is up: http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/artic...n-kids-be-all-right-once-again-armchair-analy No surprises and nothing we having identified here. Man, I wish we had signed Hendry Thomas.
Meh, there's no way Thomas is worth what he was reportedly asking (DP money, $600K, etc.). Yeah, we need to get Mari signed and fill that hole, but if we go down this season because we didn't it still would have been a bad move to tie up that much salary in Thomas.
This would only be true if Dallas gave him new deal, since that hasn't happened then my Mexico source looks correct, Thomas said no amount of money would get him to play for Rapids (guessing since OP left)
We declined his option, which meant he was out of contract, but we held his rights. Which means Dallas signed him to a new contract, but no details have come out about it. We will have to wait for the players union to release the numbers.
Yep I overlooked that piece but since he has signed with Dallas and MLS does announce DP signings, we know he didn't get that kind of loot. Still back to my original answer on this. Edit: which if you think about source of this whole DP$ rumor is RFO trying to save face that a player refused to play for them (declining his option just made it real easy for both sides) and inventing he wants too much money. Don't blame them at all either, having a player refuse to play after HC refused to coach is far from ideal.
To be fair he could have still signed for DP money and Dallas used allocation funds to buy down the hit so he's not a DP. And wasn't there some independent confirmation of Thomas wanting a raise (though not necessarily DP money)?
To those who think they have insight into the mind of the FO, do you think Lalas has a point when he says/speculates that no coach has been named yet b/c the Rapids have to first sort out the Technical Director position? I didn't think there was anything to sort out at that level, but what do I know.
Just watched that. Don't think either Lalas or Twellman have a clue but ridiculous situations lead to ridiculous speculation. Glad we can provide some humor for them.
Is this in the MLSSoccer.com link? So its Greg not Alexi Lalas? If so I'm assuming that, like normal, Lalas has no idea what he's talking about. I haven't heard a peep about Bravo being on the way out. EDIT: Never mind, found it. Alexi is an idiot. Paul Bravo has never been anything other than the TD, so his comment about "Bravo moving up and down" is completely wrong.
Interesting how I can post some theories to a web page that gets 150 hits a week if I'm lucky (at least before the free advertising) and I get bitch-slapped by Hinchey for "knowing nothing" and "not asking questions" but Alexi Fookin' Lalas can go on ESPN.com and be factually incorrect about Bravo's role and there's nothing but silence from the FO. No, I'm not bitter, why do you ask? BTW, if anyone is interested I was averaging about 20 hits a day the first half of the month, that jumped up to 127 for the day I posted the "4 weeks out, WTF is going on" that Hinchey emailed me about and 198 the Thursday I posted the email conversation followed by 279 the next day. Since them my average is around 75 hits a day. So thanks for that Tim!
Only because we are on the topic I will post my ridiculous speculation here instead of the coaching thread. Sometimes I think Hinchey is just so pissy about the speculation, questioning, and criticism that he is holding off on saying anything out of spite. Obviously, probably not true, but, I feel like even if he did know he would be like "I'm not sayin nothn cuz everyone hurt my feelings." Anyway, can't wait for the season to start and for this stupid coaching debacle to be over with. So sick of all of us and now the outside media/community having to speculate and wonder what the EFF is going on!