COMMERCE CITY, Colo. – The Colorado Rapids are closing out their 2019 regular season at Los Angeles FC tomorrow for Decision Day. Miraculously, they are still in the hut for the playoffs. The Burgundy Boys are preparing for an LAFC first team and hoping for the best.
Colorado Rapids Prepared for LAFC First Team
First of all, let’s go over what chaos needs to happen tomorrow for the Rapids to qualify for the playoffs. No matter what they need to beat LAFC and FC Dallas has to lose to Sporting KC. If either of those things don’t happen, the Pids are out no matter what else happens.
“It’s something we’ve had in the back of our mind. We kept saying that we wanted to give ourselves a chance in the last week. Thanks to the great work from the players, here we find ourselves,” manager Robin Fraser told Last Word on Soccer.
San Jose Earthquakes play at Portland Timbers. San Jose cannot win that game. They can lose or draw. If the Quakes get a point, then the Rapids need to beat LAFC by at least two goals. Then Colorado would jump San Jose on the goals for tiebreaker.
Preparing for an LAFC First Team:
LAFC doesn’t have anything to play for when it comes to playoff seeding. They’ve already clinched the playoffs. They do have a few sentimental statistics to chase. Carlos Vela has tied but not broken the single season goal record. He also hasn’t locked up the Golden Boot, with Zlatan Ibrahimovic two goals behind him and playing at Houston Dynamo.
The Supporters’ Shield champions can also clinch the best regular season (most points in a season) tomorrow with a win. We’ll have to wait for the lineups to come out to see how seriously they’ll take it.
“Even if some of their big players aren’t playing (on Sunday), they still have a great team and a great team philosophy, a great team style. We’re going to go in there thinking it’s their best team, and be prepared for whatever comes at us,” said defender Keegan Rosenberry.
“Either way, it’s going to be more about what we can do when we have our moments.”
The Rapids clearly aren’t taking them lightly. This is another hurdle to overcome, but the club could not be in a better position to hand this. They’re dangerous on the counter and set pieces, two weaknesses for the LAFC first team.
“Every week the team responds to the challenge. This is the biggest of them. Fitting it falls on the last week,” said Fraser. “For [LAFC], this is the last tune up before they have to go into the playoffs, so we think they’re going to take it seriously.”
For a team that was bottom of the table after 11 games, there could be no more fitting test then going on the road to the best MLS regular season team and getting a win. Do that and you deserve to go the playoffs.
