Annus Horribilis

Its done.  With one final loss the worst year in Rapids history is over, finally.  I only have two things to say about the game.  First, it was good to see a bunch of the kids get playing time.  Second, there were a lot of complaints that the ball was out on FSL's goal.  Going back and looking at the replays I didn't see any angle that showed the whole ball over the whole line.  Remember the Japan-Germany goal in the World Cup where they ruled just one sliver of the edge of the ball was still over one sliver of the line?  Same thing here, every angle I saw it was very believable that part of the curve of the ball was still over the line.

Ok, one more thing about the game.  Cole Bassett was obviously broken up and angry after the match.  More so than anyone else by far.  He feels the pain of losing to FSL 4 times in a year and of this whole season.

What we move onto is the impending rebuild.  And based on the last 48 hours, it will be a rebuild.  First of all, minutes after the final whistle Diego Rubio tweeted this:

Thank you Colorado, my family and I will miss you!

Then yesterday Jack Price tweeted: 

Thank you Colorado Rapids fans me and my family have had the best 6 years. The support and love shown towards us from day 1 has been top class. Wish the lads all the success in the future an honour and immense pride to captain this club for 4 years cheers, Pricey

Reportedly Rubio has already left Colorado and Price flies out tomorrow. Those are two big pieces that we'll need to replace (but also two big salaries that are freed up to do it).  ITs not an understatement to say that those are the two best Rapids over the last 5+ years and the only other player that has an argument (Yarbrough) is possibly on his way out as well.  Diego and Jack will be hugely missed, not only for their on-field play but also their leadership.  Price in particular is a fan favorite (and a favorite here too) and on a team that doesn't have many fan favorites right now that's a hole that will need to be filled.

Following up on that news, Burgundy Wave is reporting that Jonathan Lewis will not be returning, and is likely to move to an Eastern Conference team.  Lews is under contract for 2024 so this would have to be a trade or a buyout.  Lewis never panned out into the player we hoped for, in 4 seasons he had 104 appearances but only 56 starts, 5409 minutes, but only 18 goals and 5 assists in league play.  That's not much for the $650K in TAM we gave up (pluis an international spot for a year).

Assuming we can get Lewis' salary fully off the books, combined with Price and Rubio that's $1.8M in base salary cleared.  And all but about $70K of it counted against the cap (Price was slightly over max salary and had to be paid down).  That's some nice flexibility to have going into the offseason, which I guess is the silver lining in all of this.

I have a feeling this is just the start of an active offseason, at least with players leaving.  Speaking of the offseason, look for posts over the next couple of weeks going over the roster, naming a player of the year, and reviewing my predictions.  Otherwise I think things will be somewhat quiet through the playoffs, with things picking up around MLS Cup.

Lets End This Thing

Tomorrow this horror of a season finally comes to an end as the Rapids host FSL for the final game of 2023.  Most importantly, because its Decision Day, the game starts at 7pm not 7:30.  The Rapids have nothing to play for other than pride, which hasn't been enough to get them many results this season.  FSL is currently in 5th but could rise as high as 3rd with a win and other results or sink one spot to 6th.  Sadly the Rocky Mountain Cup is not in play with FSL having won the first two matchups this season.

Availability Report:

OUT: GK William Yarbrough (surgery), D Alex Gersbach (surgery), M Danny Leyva (U.S. Pan-American Games Team), M Max (removed from team activities), M Sam Nicholson (surgery)

QUESTIONABLE: GK Marko Ilic (illness)

So, there's a chance we'll see Abe Rodriguez or maybe even Adam Beaudry in the nets tomorrow.  Really we should see as many of the kids as we can.  Bring up all the Rapids 2 players we can, they deserve a chance after their success this season and there's not reason we need to see players like Rosenberry or Rubio at this point.

Prediction: 2-1 loss, goal by Bassett.  This assumes we play mostly first team players.  If we play the kids we might lose by more but that will actually be less painful than having our "best" players lose all three games to FSL this season.  Regardless, 24 hours from now the 2023 season will be history and we can move forward.

Worst. Season. Ever.

The Rapids drew Dallas on Saturday night "clinching" the record for worst season ever on PPG, regardless of what happens against FSL this weekend.  To credit the team they did look better than their average this year but really there's not much to talk about other than setting that record so like with the game preview we're going to move on to three other pieces of Rapids news.

We'll start with the Rapids 2 game last night.  I haven't covered Rapids 2 much this season here, which is my bad as they've had a really good season.  I blame the first-team being so bad that it sapped my will to blog about much.  Anyway Los Rapidos made the Western Conference Final of the MLS Next Pro playoffs and hosted Austin 2 at the Dick yesterday.  Sadly after a scoreless 120 minutes the home side lost in PKS 4-1.  Still a great season for the young guys, winning the conference and having the second best record overall. Hopefully we'll see some of them rewarded with playing time on Saturday against FSL.

Two pieces of info on the coaching search hit today.  First Arsenal correspondent Charles Watts urges Jack Wilshere  not to take the Rapids head coaching job.  He says there's lots of fan unrest at the club (true, see below) as well as a lack of support from ownership (ditto).  An article about his comments is here, while the video of him making them is on YouTube.

Secondly a rumor surfaced from TUDN tonight that Efrain Juarez is a finalist for the head coaching role.  Juarez is a 35-year old former Mexican national team player (d-mid & right back) and has spent the last 4+ seasons as an assistant coach at NYCFC (3 seasons), Standard Liege (one season), and Brugge (started this season).  I know nothing about his coaching style but combined with the Wilshere report its clear that the Front Office is looking for somebody young to lead this team.

As I was writing this another piece of news just broke, reportedly FIFA has removed SoFi Stadium from the hosting list for World Cup 2026 after KSE and FIFA had a disagreement last month over the costs and logistics of hosting.  The biggest newest stadium in the country will be dark and quiet during the world's biggest event.  Seems like KSE overplayed their hand here.

Speaking of, yesterday's Denver Post had a front page article about Victory Crossing and the lack of movement in almost 20 years in building up around DSG Park.  There's lots to digest here but the one thing that stood out to me was this:

On Monday night, Commerce City will once again try to move things forward, this time with an unconventional idea involving a contest for Colorado college students. The City Council will be asked to pay $25,000 to co-sponsor the contest organized by the national Commercial Real Estate Development Association, asking students to design plans for the site.

... 

If picked, six teams from the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Denver will be paired with professional financiers, developers, architects and engineers to come up with workable plans for Victory Crossing, Aiken said. Those teams will figure out what density level is appropriate, the zoning and environmental hurdles the property faces, and what businesses could be successful at the site. 

Ideas would be presented in April, and the two sides could reach an agreement on what Victory Crossing ultimately will be, Aiken said.

To put this in context, here's what Josh Kroenke said in his response to Centennial 38's letter a month ago:

Over the next few months, we will be finalizing the master plan for our exciting Victory Crossing Project. When this is ready in early 2024, we will be hosting several open forums with supporters and members of the community to gather feedback on our plans for the club, stadium and entire project.

KSE must think we, as Rapids fans, are stupid.  Its only been a month since they had to respond to a letter from the team's biggest supporters group and their most substantial promise made in the response is to unveil plans for Victory Crossing in early 2024.  Now we find out KSE's big plan is to pay half of a $50K sponsorship to get college students to work on a design.  Does that sound like a project that's ready to be rolled out for "open forums with supporters" to gather feedback in "early 2024"?  Does KSE not think we can connect the dots between what they said on September 14th and what the Denver Post reported on October 15th and see they don't add up?

Even if they have bigger plans and this college competition is just a small part of it, their willingness to not engage with the Denver Post and allow this to be the story is almost as bad for an organization that was recently called out for their lack of communication.  Once again we see KSE is all talk and doesn't really care about the Rapids.

The badge, the fans, the players deserve better.  Make Rapids fun again.

Coaching Rumors. Injury News, Oh And We Have A Game

The Rapids play in Dallas tomorrow, the rescheduled game from last Wednesday's rainout.  There's nothing on the line so we're mainly going to focus on the news this week.  We'll get back to the game later.

The big news, well more like pretty much confirmed rumor, is that Jack Wilshere is on the Rapids list of coaches they are considering.  Wilshere is a former Arsenal and England midfielder who retired after the 2021-22 season (he played for Danish side AGF that season) and was immediately hired as Arsenal's U-18 coach.  Last season he took the U-18s to the FA Youth Cup final.

Obviously I think we would hope that we could sign a coach with extensive first-team experience, either in MLS or an equivalent or better league.  Before Fraser we had a long list of coaches getting their initial shot at managing first-team club football.  The reality of the situation though is that we've fired our last three coaches with multiple years left on their contracts and given KSE's lack of investment we have to assume that we don't have a big number to dangle in front of a name coach to want to come into that situation.  Given that I don't mind us looking a bit "outside the box".  I'm not sure Wilshere is the right match for us, but at the same time in this situation I doubt any name we hire is going to feel like the right match.  At the very least hiring Wilshere would at least get some eyeballs on the team.

In other news Colorado announced today that Sam Nicholson underwent surgery on his ankle to relieve an ongoing problem he's had for most of the season.  Recovery time is 12-16 weeks so he would be back around the start of the 2024 season, which he's under contract for (and the team has an option on him for 2025).  This is obviously a "season-ending injury", for the 2 games of this season that are left.

Back to tomorrow's game, kickoff is at 6:30pm.  Dallas is hanging on to the last playoff spot in the West but with this game in hand they can clinch their spot in the postseason and move up to a position where they would avoid the play-in game.  Meanwhile as I mentioned the Rapids are guaranteed to finish last in the West and next-to-last overall in the league, the only thing to play for is two wins in our final two games would avoid our worst season ever.

Availability Report:

OUT: GK William Yarbrough (surgery), D Moise Bombito (Team Canada), D Alex Gersbach (surgery), D Aboubacar Keita (lower body injury), M Danny Leyva (U.S. Pan-American Games Team), M Max (removed from team activities), M Sam Nicholson (surgery), F Diego Rubio (Team Chile)

Well, we got Tavares back at least.  I expect, given the wide swath of our team that's unavailable, he'll get some playing time.

Prediction: 1-0 loss.  This was my prediction 10 days ago and the only thing that's happened is that we have even less players available.  I don't see any reason to change it.

Nice Goal Bassett

The team made it very clear early in that game on Saturday that a number of them have given up on the season, so I'm not going to spend much on writing it up.  Put it this way, the last time the Rapids gave up 4 goals in the first half was against FSL in late 2014, two weeks after the infamous Joe Nasco game (where they also did it).  Setting defensive ineptitude records we haven't seen since the early Pablo-years is not what you want to see from players who are theoretically playing for jobs next year.

The one positive note from the game as a very nice backheel goal from Cole Bassett.  That pretty much wraps up the golden boot for him with 6 goals.  Rubio is second with 3 but he'll miss next week's game while on international duty with Chile.  Bassett is also the only person who's saying the quiet parts out loud in post game press conferences, stating that things aren't good enough and suggesting changes need to be made.

Mess With Texas Fortnight: Act 2

Ok, lets try this again.  The Rapids are still trying to mess with Texas, but now a week of that has been spread out to two weeks.  The cancelled game Wednesday night has been rescheduled for next Saturday in Dallas, at 6:30pm.  Tomorrow night the team will be in Houston, also at 6:30.  They stayed in Dallas and trained there the last couple of days but I assume they'll come home with a week between games.  With the other results on Wednesday night a win tomorrow would clinch the Wooden Spoon for Toronto, and would put us within 2 points of avoiding our worst season ever.  Meanwhile a win for Houston would clinch skipping the play-in game and would put them in the mix for a home playoff game.

Availability Report:

OUT: GK William Yarbrough (surgery), D Moise Bombito (yellow card accumulation), D Alex Gersbach (surgery), D Aboubacar Keita (lower body injury), M Max (removed from team activities), M Sidnei Tavares (illness)

Bombito was actually out for the game Wednesday night but wasn't included in the availability report.  Since the game didn't get played he has to serve his suspension tomorrow night, then will miss the rescheduled Dallas game as he'll be on Canadian National Team duty.  Tavares will get, at most, 7 appearances which is not what you're hoping for from a big summer signing.

Prediction: 2-1 loss, goal by Bassett.  Houston is one of the best home teams in the league, I just don't see us getting a result here.  Maybe the team will surprise me with the unexpected rest by not playing Wednesday night.

No Messing With Texas (For Now)

Tonight's game has been postponed due to lightning.  A makeup date will be announced in the future, but it will have to be either on the international weekend next weekend or on the Wednesday on either side of it.

Mess With Texas Week: Act 2

After beating Austin to kick off Mess With Texas week the Rapids head to the Lone Star State for back to back games with the other two teams.  First up, Dallas tomorrow night.  Or as we like to call them around here, the 2010 MLS Cup losers.  Dallas is hanging on to the last playoff spot by 3 points over SKC and Minnesota (but SKC has played one more game than the others) so they're going to be pressing hard to get a win.  Of course when Dallas' playoff hopes intersect the Rapids bad things tend to happen for them.  Kickoff tomorrow is at 6:30.

Availability Report:

OUT: GK William Yarbrough (surgery), D Alex Gersbach (surgery), D Aboubacar Keita (lower body injury), M Max (removed from team activities)

QUESTIONABLE: M Sidnei Tavares (illness)

No changes there.  Unfortunately one of the benefits to adding a player midseason is that they get the rest of the season to adjust to MLS before really stepping up the next season.  Tavares has lost almost all of that benefit.

Prediction: 1-0 loss.  These are the two worst offenses in the Western conference, but Dallas is slightly better than we are.  I think we get an ugly game and Dallas sneaks one by for the win.

Mess With Texas Week Starts With A W

In a game that clearly showed why these two teams are at the bottom of the West the Rapids came out the victors, through some decent play and some luck.  Austin won pretty much all the stats, including shots, shots on target, and possession but at the end of the night they had 0 on the scoreboard while Colorado found a way to get a goal.  In fact, they had their first halftime lead since the Open Cup game on May 9th.

Of the last 5 goals the Rapids have been involved in (for and against), 4 of them came from corners.  In this one Ronan got his 10th assist getting the corner across the box to a on-pushing Maxsø, who managed to get just enough space to get his boot on the cross and knock it home.  Not only that, but the 49 minutes in the lead increased our total lead at home time to 130 minutes this season!  (League games only)

Shout out to Ilic who had a series of saves with about 10 minutes left, including one right off his face.  At the end of the sequence when he had done all he could, Will Bruin had him dead to rights.  Keeper on the ground, open net, and an easy shot inside the 6.  And somehow he skied it over the bar.  Sometimes you need a bit of luck in this game.  Also a shout out to Seb Anderson who had a good game in his first start this season.

Man of the Match: Andres Maxsø.  I gave strong consideration to Ilic but Maxsø made the team of the week for MLS so that was the tiebreaker.