The starting right midfielder for the Rapids All-Time Team is Anders Limpar.How Acquired: Signed as a free agent from Swedish side AIK.
Years In Colorado: 1999 through 2000
How Departed: Left as a free agent, signed but never played for Swedish side Djurgardens IF before retiring
Our first international player in the All-Time team, Anders Limpar might be a bit of a surprise in this position. Most of the All-Time team involves players who spent significantly more time in Colorado than Limpar. While Anders only played in 36 games over two years (mainly due to injury), his class when he was available was second maybe only to the all-time left midfielder, who we'll discuss next week.
In his time in Colorado Limpar was the perfect winger for a team who's offense was designed around crossing the ball. The Swede would bring the ball down the right wing and whip cross after cross into the box. This lead to the odd stat that in 2 years Limpar had one more shot on goal than he had assists on actual goals. His 15 assists in 36 games means he was setting up a goal in just over every two games. When you consider he often didn't play a full 90 minutes his average increases to assisting on a goal every 1.8 games. That's the best ratio in Rapids history for a player with 5 or more assists! Not only that, he was playing on a team where there was no star striker as nobody had more than 10 goals in a season while he was here.
Of course the most notable assist in Limpar's Rapids career was the setup for Marcelo Balboa's legendary bicycle kick in Columbus in 2000. Because you can never see it enough, here it is again:
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4 comments:
Was Pepsi a team sponsor back then?
Not in the same way that jersey sponsors are done now. MLS would sign league sponsors at a national level and for a certain sponsorship price your logo would be put on a team's jersey.
I'm suprised you went with Limpar on the right. If I remember correctly he played more central for us. I assume you did this to make room for Pablo and El Pibe in the center. If so, I cant argue with that. Although, as a straight up right midfielder, I don't know if I would have picked him. I would probably go with Adrian Paz, but there is not a whole lot between them. I thought you would go with Chris Henderson or Terry Cooke. I would think this is probably the hardest position to pick a single best player.
Wait until you see the left mid and center mid. ;)
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