Not the Midseason Review

We're at the midpoint of the season and normally I'd do a position-by-position report card. Honestly though, I'm not up for it. As you can probably tell from the lack of posting here, the last couple of weeks have really sapped my energy for the Rapids.

It's very deflating to be a Rapids fan right now. Its not hard to look around the league and go "what about us?". We see signings like Henry, Bravo, Marquez, N'kufo, and Castillo. We see major international friendlies against teams like Manchester United, Inter Milan, and Real Madrid. In Colorado? No friendlies, no signings, and no word of anything from the Rapids Front Office.

Here's an interesting note. Since the end of the Rapids season last year every MLS team except for Colorado and Chivas has either won a major trophy, hosted a major international friendly, or made a major international signing. And Chivas signed Giacarlo Maldonado, so they've had some headlines.

Add to that the way the team appears to be entering its "summer swoon" phase based on their play in the last couple of games and their 5 game winless streak and its very hard to be anything but depressed about the current state of the team. I appear to not be alone in this feeling as the Rapids attendance isn't anything to write home about. It's up about 1200 from last year, but still down from 2007 and 2008. This year, like 2008, there's been 2 sellouts but both of those are in the past and I'm not sure we can expect to see another one.

Right now I get the impression that KSE doesn't care about the Rapids. The people in the Front Office seem to want to do a good job, but they're not being given the resources to do that. They don't seem to have the budget to sign a DP or to entice a big-name team to come to Colorado (meanwhile the Portland Timbers of USSF D-II played Manchester City in a 5,000 seat stadium). We know that the budget for the new coach was limited at best, and our play is suffering from that.

At the end of the day, why should I care about the team when its clear the team doesn't care about its fans? The website still lists 2 tickets in the season tickets package for USOC/exhibition/international matches but I've been told that at this point they won't host any games for us to use our bonus tickets on. The team can't even be bothered to honor the advertising they created. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not going to stop rooting for them or anything, but its hard to be somebody that wants to spread the word about the Rapids and get more fans interested in the team when the Rapids don't seem to want to keep the fans they have interested.