MLS brought back their reserve league last season and it was a good thing for the development of players; guys like Davy Armstrong, Steven Emory and Eddie Ababio got most of their minutes last year only through the reserve games. The 2012 schedule was released by MLS on Monday, and the Colorado Rapids have ten games in the reserve league, playing in the 'Central' division. They play each division opponent twice, once at home and once on the road.

Here's the dates for all of the reserve league games the Rapids will play this season:

March 13 - Colorado Rapids vs. Houston Dynamo
March 20 - FC Dallas vs. Colorado Rapids
April 2 - Chicago Fire vs. Colorado Rapids
April 8 - Colorado Rapids vs. Real Salt Lake
April 24 - Colorado Rapids vs. Sporting Kansas City
May 23 - Houston Dynamo vs. Colorado Rapids
June 9 - Sporting KC vs. Colorado Rapids
August 5 - Real Salt Lake vs. Colorado Rapids
August 15 - Colorado Rapids vs. Chicago Fire
August 29 - Colorado Rapids vs. FC Dallas

The home games for Colorado will be at Field 20 of the Dick's Sporting Goods Park complex.

The Colorado Rapids are going to the tropical island wonderland of Hawaii, but it's not for a vacation! Well, it's kind of a vacation... to Disney World, if Disney World were in Hawaii and were a soccer tournament featuring random teams who probably don't want to be there in order to win something shiny.

If you haven't figured it out, the joke here is that they're playing in a Mickey Mouse Cup.

Anyway, on Sunday morning the Rapids headed down to Hawaii to take part in the 2012 Hawaii Soccer Invitational Tournament, a new tourney featuring teams from MLS, J-League, K-League and A-League in Asia and Oceania. It follows a similar format to an older tourney called the Pan-Pacific Championship.

More coverage of the tournament will start here on February 22nd, before the tournament begins. One thing to note first though, if you want to watch the games they'll all be available on ESPN3, though quite late at night in Mountain Time.

It took quite a while for the news to finally break ever since Paul Bravo announced that a signing was coming at the Supporters Fan Forum, but we've finally got our 'mystery #10' for the Colorado Rapids. The Rapids announced on Tuesday that they had signed attacking midfielder Martin Rivero out of Rosario Central. Rather than getting him on a full contract, he's going to be the first Rapids player to sign via a loan in quite a while!

Rivero has had a decent career with the club since they got relegated to the second tier of the Argentinian club, and knowing Oscar Pareja's ability to scout young talent, the amount of hype that Rivero was given should prove him to be a quite exciting player in Burgundy.

The 22 year old Argentinian is certain to feature big in the future plans of the team. No details on the loan contract have been released as per the usual MLS hiding everything. This is the latest in the huge midfield expansion that the Rapids have seen in the past couple of weeks, and another cog in the brand new 'attacking mentality' of the squad alongside guys like Tony Cascio, Jaime Castrillon and Kohei Yamada.

We would like to welcome Rivero to the club!

It looks like we were correct - and by 'we' I mean the Denver Post - and Rosario Central midfielder Martin Rivero is indeed the 'true 10' player that the Rapids have been scouting all this time. Unfortunately, two announcement deadlines by Tim Hinchey later we're seeing no Martin Rivero on the roster for the Rapids.

The Denver Post reported late Tuesday that apparently Rivero is technically still under contract with Rosario Central and they're trying to keep him in Argentina rather than letting him come up to Colorado. Kind of funny when you consider the fact that people were making up rumors about Dallas or somebody trying to block the signing after the deadline got moved on Monday.

Hinchey is taking this in stride and is making up for his mistake, at least. Good man, him. Until we actually see a result from the overhyped media circus that surrounded the Rivero signing though, it's going to be a long week.

Thanks to our friends at The Terrace for the original news on this.

Well, never mind then. The announcement for that new 'true 10' Argentine player that Colorado Rapids fans have all been waiting for was originally scheduled for 3 PM Mountain Time on Monday, but the schedule appears to have been changed.

Rapids president Tim Hinchey announced earlier today on twitter that the announcement has been delayed until tomorrow as he is currently in Dallas. The already long wait is going to be just a bit longer, hopefully the announcement is worth not only the hype it generated already but whatever else is going to stir up in the next day!

We're assuming that it's still going to be at 3 PM, since he said '24 hours' rather than just 'tomorrow'. In that case, we'll just have to keep the speculation going as to who this mysterious new player is! (Of course, at least one person knows because somebody had to have gotten that contest right, but who's counting?)

By the way, Justin Hein on twitter brings up a good point with this tweet. River Plate was in Dallas today...

Colorado Rapids president Tim Hinchey III announced yesterday that he was going to hold a little contest on Twitter to see who could guess the newest member of the Rapids, our mysterious Argentine 'True 10'. During all the kerfuffle, Hinchey also revealed the date and time that we would finally learn who our new midfielder/forward would be.

Hinchey tweeted that we would get an announcement at 3 PM on Monday, February 11th. Had somebody not won the contest yet, they had left it open to guessing all the way up until 9 AM Monday.

Hopefully the announcement lives up to the hype, there's been all sorts of talking about who this new kid is and how much he's going to impact the new Rapids system of offense. Either way, it's yet another exciting midfield signing in an offseason that has been absolutely bloated with exciting midfield signings. It's hard to complain about that.

The Colorado Rapids appear to be in dealing mode this offseason, as they've now lost their second striker in only a week. After releasing Caleb Folan on mutual terms, the Rapids have traded a conditional draft pick for striker Macoumba Kandji.

Kandji was originally traded from New York for Mehdi Ballouchy in 2010, a move that turned out to be wonderful for Colorado as he ended up forcing the own goal that won the MLS Cup that same year. Before that he wasn't particularly effective, and in MLS play he remained that way after coming back from the ACL tear he suffered.

Colorado still has one target forward, their best target forward, remaining on the team in Conor Casey. It's already been stated by Paul Bravo that Casey is pretty much guaranteed to stick around simply because he can always find a way to bang home 10-15 goals per season when healthy, but this move makes it look like manager Oscar Pareja is going towards a more speed and finesse filled game overall for his 4-3-3 formation.

Here's some details on what pick the Rapids could get, tweeted by Jose de Jesus Ortiz.

Most people thought of Wednesday as the National Signing Day for college football, but there was some movement in the soccer world as well. Seven different Colorado Rapids academy members signed letters of intent for various college programs around the country and some of them were big names.

US Men's National Team U-17 player Dillon Serna made the most waves as he signed for the perennial powerhouse the University of Akron, who won the 2010 NCAA championship before having several players including Anthony Ampaipitakwong and Darlington Nagbe signed to MLS Clubs in the draft. Youngster Shane O'Neill signed for the 2009 NCAA champs, the University of Virginia. Young midfielder Ross LaBauex was originally drafted from those 09 champs.

Other Rapids academy signings included forward Idrissa Camera to Texan college Midwestern State, defender Chris Guirle to the University of New Mexico, midfielder Karstin Hanlin to the University of Denver, defender Jason Prichard to Sterling College and midfielder Rojesh Shrestha to Metropolitan State in Denver.

With training camps still coming up, there may still be a chance for some of the bigger names, mainly Serna, to get a lower level roster spot and spurn the colleges they selected. You may remember that in 2010, that exact scenario unfolded with Davy Armstrong who got a roster spot even after saying he would play for the University of Washington.