Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Gold Cup and Behind The Draft Scenes

Big news and interesting info today.  Obviously the focus is the announcement that Denver will be one of the hosts for this summer's Gold Cup in July for the first time.  The Gold Cup is CONCACAF's continental championship consisting of 12 teams.  The qualifiers for this year's tournament are the United States, Mexico, Canada, Cuba, Trinidad & Tobago, Haiti, Martinique, Costa Rica, Honduras, Belize, El Salvador, and the winner of Friday's Guatemala - Panama match.  Sports Authority Field was chosen as the host, not DSG Park, so that was a bit of a surprise.  My guess is that Sports Authority was willing to guarantee more moeny than the Rapids were.  That's not a surprise given that the Rapids are already paying out for the World Cup Qualifier in March and they paid out for the Swansea City and Women's National Team match last year.  The draw for teams and schedules will happen later, I assume we'd get ticket information after that.

The other interesting info is that the Rapids and Revolution are the two teams featured in MLS's Inside the SuperDraft video series this year. Today the first part was posted with a couple of quick interviews with Pareja and assistant coach Dave Dir. No shocking revelations in this one, though Pareja seemed to be very interested in a player like Dillon Powers. The preview for the next one looks like they'll be in the Rapids war room at least the night before the draft.

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