MLS Thursday Night: DC United v Colorado Rapids

It evidently is a new rule that the United States national team must play every Thursday night and steal the thunder from the grand MLS game of the week experiment. Well, we’ve got the thunder under lock and key and they ain’t stealing it even if they are playing an Argentina team that is the Harlem Globtrotters to the Yanks’ Washington Generals. Focus on MLS we must.

The Thursday night encounter this week falls squarely into the category of: you’ll probably watch it if you have a rooting interest in either team. In the one corner you have the fourth place Colorado Rapids. In the other corner there is fourth place DC United. Colorado enters the game without a win in the month of June. That means they have lost four straight times. They haven’t scored in 248 minutes, which is about the equivalent of going to a bar every night of the week for a month and not even walking away with a phone number. Not that I know anything about that.

Meanwhile, DC United put together a nice little stretch of five games without a loss before losing to lowly Real Salt Lake last weekend. That is the equivalent of going to a bar, chatting up a lovely one, and seeing her walk out with the tool who spent the evening playing Golden Tee in the corner by himself while nursing a Coors Light all night. Not that I know anything about that either.

What I do know is that these two teams met way back when on the opening night of the MLS season with Colorado collecting a 2-1 victory. I also know that the following players will not be watching MLS Thursday Night because they are busy elsewhere: DC: Jaime Moreno (Bolivia; Copa America); Bobby Boswell, Ben Olsen (USA; Copa America); Bryan Arguez (USA; FIFA U-20 World Cup); Kasali Yinka Casal (Nigeria; FIFA U-20 World Cup) … COL: Herculez Gomez, Kyle Beckerman (USA; Copa America).

The absence of Beckerman and Olsen means that you can’t spend the entire 90 minutes marveling at how some people can really grow beards and hair, so instead you might want to keep an eye on the following.

1. Jovan Kirovski – Really? He is still alive? I won’t believe it until I see him. By the way, did you know that he is the only American-born player to have ever won a Champions League championship?

2. Luciano Emilio – It isn’t much of a surprise that the striker didn’t get a call up for the Brazil national team. In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising if people in Brazil have forgotten about him entirely. With stints in Germany, Honduras, Mexico, and now the United States, Emilio is a well traveled fellow. He also is having a fine season with 6 goals in 11 games.

3. Nats Chat – You can almost be guaranteed that the ESPN crew will spend large portions of the game talking about the national team even though their network dropped the ball by not carrying the Gold Cup or the Copa America.

Enjoy the game and by all means feel free to chatter about MLS, USA-USA-USA, or the physiology behind ice cream headaches.

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Category: MLS, World Football