I Picked A Bad Week To Stop Sniffing Glue

Wow, the Rapids go dead quiet after signing Moor in late November and the week I leave for Christmas vacation all kind of news breaks.  Not only do we now have the 2020 schedule but we have solid rumors on not 1, not 2, but 3 different DP signings!  We've got a lot of ground to cover so lets get to it.

Schedule:
We already knew the season was starting in DC on Feb, 29th, followed by Orlando in the home opener a week later.  Now we know that we'll have a fairly balanced schedule all season, with only one stretch of 3 games at home and no more than back-to-back games on the road.  That home stretch from mid-August to mid-September includes a bye week for international play so even that won't feel like a true 3 weeks at home in a row.  With the league expanding again this season teams will no longer play every team in the league,  We won't play Atlanta (probably good), Cincinnati (probably bad), or expansion Miami (unknown) this year, a fairly even group of 3 to miss.

Of the 34 games 5 are midweek between two weekend games.  The worst week is the middle week of September where we host KC, then have to go to Nashville midweek and then out to LA to play the Galaxy on the weekend.  That's a lot of travel in a short time period.  The rest of them are either home-away-home or away-home-away with no travel further east than Minnesota or KC.  That three game home stand finishes with that KC game, and 3 of our last 4 are on the road after that, with our final home game against Seattle before we travel to SJ for the season finale.

Highlights include our trip to Utah for our Rocky Mountain Cup matchup on April 11th, Fraser's/Moor's/Irwin's former TFC side coming here on June 20th, RBNY as the opponent on 4th of July (a game I won't mind missing for my anniversary, plus its Denver Pop Culture Con weekend), expansion side Nashville coming here on Aug 9th, led by Gary Smith and likely with Matt Pickens, Koz Kimura, and Jamie Smith in tow (they all played or worked for Nashville in USL in 2019) for what I expect will be our celebration of the 10th Anniversary of our MLS Cup win, and the home Rocky Mountain Cup match on Aug. 22nd.

Attacking Midfielder DP:
There are multiple reports linking the Rapids with Danish attacking midfielder Younes Namli.  He matches what info I've gotten from sources about who our target is as well.  Namli is of Moroccan decent which explains why some of the reports are coming out of Morocco.  Younes is 25 years old and got his start with a Danish side before playing for two different Dutch teams.  In May he transferred to Russian side FC Krasnodar for $2.25M.  Krasnodar has been playing him in Champions League qualifying and Europa League games this fall as well as Russian Premier League games.  He's largely been used as a winger though, which might explain why he's looking for a move.  His team also seems anxious to move him, again maybe because they aren't using him in his best position.

Winger DP:
Colorado has also been linked with French winger Jimmy Cabot, who also matches info I've gotten from other sources.  He's also 25 years old and is currently playing for Lorient who's on top of the Ligue 2 table.  Before that he played for Ligue 2 side Troyes.  It sounds like he'd be coming on a free transfer in the summer as his contract expires as the end of the Ligue 2 season.  He's a regular starter for Lorient, helping to lead them to their current top-of-the-table position.

Young DP:
Just this weekend the Rapids have been linked with two different young Argentinian midfielders that would qualify as young DPs, winger Valentin Depietri and central mid Emanuel Maciel.  Depietri's current team, Santamaria, has confirmed the approach and sound like they want to cash in on moving him but Depietri has been quoted as saying he's not ready for a big move out of the country.  Again, these details match what I've heard elsewhere.  That leads me to believe that Depietri is our primary target while Maciel is a backup based on Depietri's hesitation.  Maciel is 22, while Depietri is 19 years old.

None of these players are "big names" that would generate a lot of buzz, but I don't think the Rapids are in that market right now.  Tim Howard was that kind of signing and a lot of fans were upset about signing a player for that purpose.  Of course a number of those same fans are now upset we're not making a splashy signing, so there's no pleasing some people.  In the end what matters is the results on the field, not the appeal of the player.

One interesting wrinkle in these signings is that, with possibly the exception of Cabot who would come on a free, these players are DPs only because of their transfer fee, not due to their salaries. MLS announced a couple of years ago that they had changed the DP rules, so that instead of amortizing the transfer fee of a DP over the length of the contract the transfer fee would all count in the first year.  This is how I've been told it still works, hover the current published MLS rules on the league website refers to amortizing the transfer fee over the length of the contract.

If indeed the team can take the transfer fee hit in the first season, that means that Namli and our young DP would likely only be DPs in 2020, when 2021 rolls around their salaries would be low enough that they would just count as a regular international player on the roster.  That would mean than next offseason we could sign another DP and young DP as those slots would be open (Cabot would presumably still be a DP due to salary).  That's some nice flexibility if accurate.