And Now The Bad News

I know I said earlier this week that I was done with the commentary for a while but then we had news today.  The other half of the news today was this:

Colorado Rapids president: Pablo Mastroeni will be back as coach

 Yeah, really not the news any of us wanted to hear.  We all know why Pablo shouldn't be back at this point, I won't go into that again.  Let's take a look at some of the quotes from the article though.

"I guarantee he's going to be a successful coach in this league," Rapids president Tim Hinchey told reporters at Dick's Sporting Goods Park. "What I hope is that it's here."

Tim, the fact that you're not making a coaching change pretty much means your guaranteeing it by putting your job on the line.

"He's got 60 percent of the field sorted out," Bravo said. "If you take from our goalline to the first ten yards of the opponent's half, we're as good as any team in the league."

You know why strikers get paid the big bucks in soccer?  Because attacking is the hardest piece to figure out.  We do have a solid defense but that's largely due to putting 7, 8, sometimes 9 defensive-minded players on the field.  Hardly the "entertaining, attacking soccer" we've been promised in the past.

"That's terrible," Hinchey said. "We're not going to make any excuses. We owe the fan base a lot more than 17 wins over that many matches. We're keenly aware of that.

"Were all going to be held accountable at the end of the day. But for this group right now, stability is the right course for action."

End of what day Tim?  We've completely failed in all our on-field goals the last two seasons.  How is keeping that stable going to help?

Hinchey added that he was "completely angry" with the way the Rapids played at home. Last year, he said making Dick's Sporting Goods Park a "fortress" was his top priority, but Colorado was 5-7-5 at home — worst in MLS.

Apparently we're not holding anyone accountable for that yet...

"It's disrespectful to call (Kreis) an 'obvious upgrade over Pablo,'" Hinchey said. "I have a head coach so I'm not interested in commenting on other people that are available."

Ok now, that's just insulting.  Kreis only has a MLS Cup, another MLS Cup appearance, a U.S. Open Cup final appearance, and a CONCACAF Champions League final appearance, not to mention an all time 112-67-95 record, good for a 1.47 pts/game average.  In comparison the Rapids best-ever career coaching record was Gary Smith's 1.43 pts.game.  Pablo's current record is 1.02 pts/game.  To suggest that calling Kreis an obvious upgrade is disrespectful is ridiculous.  Sigi Schmid may be out in Seattle if they don't win it all, would calling him an obvious upgrade also be disrespectful?

This article was nothing but spin from Hinchey and Bravo to try to sell the fact that Pablo is coming back.  I was really hoping they were going to come to their senses and make a change but this article makes it pretty clear that's not going to happen yet.  For this to work they need to come out of the starting blocks earning 12-13 points in the first 5 games.  Otherwise the figurative pitchforks and torches will be out and the fans will be storming the gates.