Colorado Finally Announces Roster Decisions

Friday was the deadline to pick up player options for 2024 and the Rapids made their announcements today:

Options exercised: Andrew Gutman, Calvin Harris, Ralph Priso

Options declined: Sebastian Anderson, Steven Beitashour, Oliver Larraz, Jack Price, Abraham Rodriguez, Gustavo Vallecilla, William Yarbrough

Out of contract and leaving the team: Luis Diaz, Diego Rubio

Loan ending: Danny Leyva

Option triggered earlier this season: Danny Wilson

Currently signed for 2024:

Lalas Abubakar, Max Alves, Cole Bassett, Moïse Bombito, Kévin Cabral, Daniel Chacón, Michael Edwards, Braian Galván, Alex Gersbach, Andrew Gutman, Calvin Harris, Marko Ilić, Aboubacar Keita, Jonathan Lewis, Andreas Maxsø, Rafael Navarro, Sam Nicholson, Ralph Priso, Connor Ronan, Keegan Rosenberry, Sidnei Tavares, Jackson Travis, Danny Wilson, Darren Yapi 

The Rapids are negotiating to bring back Seb Anderson, Olli Larraz, and William Yarbrough on new (presumably cheaper) contracts.  Beitashour, Price, Rodriguez, and Vallecilla will not return.

A couple of notes.  Danny Wilson's contract had a clause that automatically triggered when certain metrics were achieved, which he met earlier this year.  Hat-tip to Matt Pollard at Burgundy Wave and Brendan Ploen with the Denver Post for finding that out.  The team has an option on him for 2025 that sounds like doesn't automatically trigger.

Max is still listed on the roster for 2024.  My assumption is that there are legal reasons that his contract can't be terminated for cause yet, my guess is that they can't do it until the legal process plays out in Brazil.  They could buyout his contract but each team only gets one buyout without taking a salary cap hit and they would still have to pay him if they bought him out, while terminating him for cause means the league isn't on the hook.  Unless he gets an absolutely clean pass from Brazilian authorities he'll never play here again and I'd be surprised if the contract is still in effect by the time the season starts.

There were really no surprises with the decisions today.  Gutman was an obvious pickup and while Harris wasn't particularly notable last year he's young and cheap so bringing him back makes sense.  Priso is really the only player I wouldn't have brought back, I'm not sure he adds anything but being a warm body at this point.

As far as who we let go, we knew Rubio and Price were leaving, and just yesterday news came out that Diaz was looking at European options.  We also knew about Leyva already.  

Vallecilla goes down as, so far, the worst trade Smith has ever made and potentially a top 3 worst trade in team history.  $800K of GAM and reportedly paying of his remaining transfer fee for 568 minutes of play.  We did get $185K of that GAM back by loaning him to Columbus this season, but even with that you're looking at a guy who made 12 appearances and had 2 red cards (in fact, he has a foul-to-card ratio of under 4 to 1 in his 49 MLS appearances).  Just a debacle of a knee-jerk move when Keita went down injured last season.

Beitashour is likely to retire and Abe Rodriguez seems to have been passed by Adam Beaudry for the "keeper fo the future" role so no surpises or real loss in letting them go.  Hopefully AbeRod can find a starting job either in MLS or the USL Championship.  Brining Seb Anderson and Olli Larraz back makes complete sense, especially the latter.  I hope they get that done.  I'm a little surprised that they're talking to Yarbrough, I don't know that paying him what he's worth makes sense as a backup, but we'll see.

Not counting Max there are only 23 signed players, and that includes Chacon who's out on loan in Costa Rica and Tavares and Navarro who are only here on loan through midseason.  So its really 20 players who are available to Armas for the whole 2024 season, and that assumes guys Lewis isn't traded.  There's a lot of holes to fill.

Rapids Make Armas Signing Official

The Rapids made it official this morning, announcing Chris Armas as the 10th permanent head coach in team history.  A full press conference will be held in almost two weeks, on November 30th.  We've covered my opinion of the hire last night so I won't get into that but there are a couple of more details that came out today that I want to mention.

First the timing of all this is odd.  Announcing the biggest hire a team will make on a Friday, and one going into the very busy Thanksgiving week, is a good way to see the announcement lost in the typical weekend and holiday chaos.  That leads me to believe that either they weren't originally planning to announce the hire today and last night's leak forced their hand or they knew the reaction to this hire would be extremely negative and they want it to get lost in the holiday.  Or they just have a very strange media strategy.  None of those options fill me with a lot of confidence.

Secondly Burgundy Wave is reporting that it wasn't a final 4 but a final 5, but Wilshere still wasn't one of those 5.  I'm curious who the 5th name is but it sounds like it doesn't matter as BW is also saying that coming out of the final round interviews Armas was the top choice.  This isn't a case where they had one or multiple other candidates turn them down and they settled on Armas.  It's mind-boggling to me that somebody with Armas' track record could be the front-runner for a team in such desperate need of taking a public positive step.  Instead they stepped on a rake, again.

Maybe in the end Armas will prove us all wrong.  I truly hope he does.  But there is nothing in his history or in the recent actions of the Front Office and KSE that makes it seem like 2024 will be anything but a completely lost season.

On a semi-related note Jeremiah Oshan tweeted from Sounders practice today that Danny Leyva was there and training with the team.  If you remember we loaned him in from Seattle this season with no purchase option.  It always looked like he'd go back to the Sounders but this seems to make that official.  Based on his play here its no loss to Colorado, he wasn't very good.  Sounders fans have a much higher opinion of him though.  Note that because of the roster freeze he can't play for the Sounders in the postseason, but it makes sense that he continues to train with them now that the Rapids season is over.

Rapids Doom Themselves, Hire Chris Armas

Well, we should have seen this coming.  The Rapids Front Office, led (presumably) by President Padraig Smith and Sporting Director Fran Taylor* have hired Chris Armas as the 10th permanent head coach in team history, according to reports tonight from The Athletic, Denver Post, and Burgundy Wave (among others).  

* When you click on Taylor's bio from the staff page of the website (which lists him as Sporting Director) the bio page lists him as Assistant GM still.  Presumably the web team haven't gotten around to updating his bio after his recent promotion...seven months ago

The universal and immediate condemnation of this move from MLS fans across the league, seen in the last hour on Twitter/X, on the Athletic story reporting the news, and on BigSoccer should tell you what kind of hire this is.  The Rapids have been immediately written in ink at the bottom of the standings for 2024, as nobody believes Armas is capable at coaching at this level.  A recap of his head coaching career in MLS:

2018: Named head coach of RBNY in July 8th for the departing Jesse Marsch, he kept a Shield-leading team on top of the table in the second half of the season.  Beat the Crew 3-1 in the conference semis, but a tactical change in the first leg of the conference finals cost them a 3-0 loss and an eventual 3-1 series elimination

2019: Took RBNY to a 14-14-6 (W/L/T) season, 6th in the East and 12th overall (coming off a Shield winning season).  Lost to Philly 4-3 in the first round of the playoffs.  Lost to New England in their first USOC game.

2020: Took RBNY to a 9-9-5 record in the COVID-impacted season.  Went 1-2-0 in the MLs Is Back Tournament.  Finished 6th in the East again and 13th overall.  Was eliminated 3-2 in the first round of the playoffs by Columbus

EDIT: Arms was actually fired in September of 2020, going 3-3-2 in the 8 games he managed, including 1-2-0 in the MLS Is Back tournament.  He gets no blame for the playoff results.

2021: After being fired by RBNY he was hired by Toronto in the offseason.  Went 1-8-2 before being fired on the 4th of July.  Beat Leon in the CONCACAF Champions League before being eliminated by Cruz Azul.  Coached a total of 15 games.

So here's a guy who has failed at "big" spending clubs like RBNY and Toronto, and has shown a distressing lack of ability to win a knockout game (he won 2 of 6 knockout games/series in his career), something the Rapids already suffer from.  In what world does this look like a resume that will succeed at one of the least supported clubs in MLS?  The only thing he has going for him is that he's likely cheap and desperate.

With this, I'm done.  I'm not renewing my season tickets for the first time since I signed up for them the day Fernando Clavijo stepped down in 2008.15+ seasons and I'm out.  Maybe. maybe, if they have a miracle run of singings this offseason I'll come back but I find that almost impossible.

That's not to say I'll stop following the team.  I'll buy MLS Season Pass and watch them from home, and I'll probably buy a few tickets through C38, but they aren't getting $325 from me up front to watch the disaster the 2024 season is going to be.

Coaching Update and Roster Analysis

Its still all quiet on the Commerce City front when it comes to the coaching hire, and according to Burgundy Wave it may be a while.  Sounds like either their preferred candidate isn't happy with the offer or is trying to stretch the process out while they feel out other opportunities.  Either way its not a ringing endorsement of this organization.  If they don't announce tomorrow (and that sounds unlikely) they won't announce anything for a couple of weeks.  Making a major announcement like this during Thanksgiving week is just asking for it to get lost.  That also means the new coach will have no say on which current players we extend new offers to (those are due by Thanksgiving) or likely which options we pick up (those have to be decided by December 1st).

Burgundy Wave also reported that Jack Wilshere is no longer a candidate for the role and it sounds like he removed himself.  Its unclear if he just decided it wasn't a good match for him, or if he would still be interested but the compensation package wasn't enough to get him to make the move.  BW believes the unnamed 4th candidate is likely Efrain Juarez, to go along with Little, Armas, and Kah.

With the absence of coaching news lets get to my normal year-end roaster analysis.  Normally this is breaking the roster into core pieces, additional players worth keeping, and areas to upgrade.  That's really not the case this year.  This is a bad roster no matter how you look at it.  There's maybe a handful of players I would keep if I were building a MLS team from scratch, otherwise everyone is replaceable. (For this exercise I'm considering Price and Rubio as already gone, given their announcements)

Those players:

Cole Bassett - If this team has any heart, he's the center of it

Moise Bombito - Good young defender

Andrew Gutman - Experienced MLS defender in the prime of his career

Conor Ronan - What offense we have goes through him

Three others that might be worth keeping with a better team and organization around them:

Andres Maxsø - I think he's better than he showed this year, but not sure he's a DP

Keegan Rosenberry - He had some rough games this year, but he was playing with a questionable backline

William Yarbrough - He didn't need to go out like this, though I expect he will

Literally everyone else can go and be replaced by whomever we can find with little loss of quality.  A combination of being too expensive, ,taking an international spot, or just not being good enough means nobody else on the roster has earned their spot.  That might be a bit harsh on a couple of the homegrowns like Rodriguez and Larraz, but with so little playing time in a year where it couldn't hurt to have played them leads me to believe we shouldn't expect much in the near future.

So that's a maybe-MLS quality backline of Rosenberry-Bombito-Maxsø-Gutman, backed up by Yarbrough (or more likely Ilic) and a couple of number 8s in midfield, but nothing else to build from.  The new coach will have a lot of work to do when he gets here in order to make this a team that won't be embarrassed for a second-straight season.

Just for completion's sake, here are my thoughts on the rest of the roster:

Lalas Abubakar - A max salary player that's backup MLS defender quality

Max - We all know the issues there

Seb Anderson - He would have done it by now if he was going to be a MLS player

Steven Beitashour - Almost certainly retiring

Kevin Cabral - The biggest waste of $$$ and an international slot on the roster

Luis Diaz - Who?  $500K player that I barely remember at the end of the season

Michael Edwards - See Seb Anderson

Braian Galvan - Doesn't have the brain to go with his physical talent, too much of a hothead

Alex Gersbach - Thankful that Cabral is here to take the biggest waste of an international spot

Calvin Harris - Bench player that we spent $200K+ to acquire

Marko Ilic - Why pay a transfer fee and use an international slot on a keeper?

Aboubacar Keita - Never healthy

Jonathan Lewis - At some point you have to accept its not going to happen

Danny Leyva - Well, he's better than Priso?

Rafael Navarro - Didn't show anything to be worth a DP slot and a $5 million fee

Sam Nicholson - Love you Sam, but you look like a League One player in a Championship league

Ralph Priso - Simply not MLS quality

Sidnei Tavares - Depth at best, not worth $525K and an international slot

Gustavo Vallecilla - Maybe we'll get lucky and Columbus will keep him

Danny Wilson - His time is up, he just can't keep up at the MLS level anymore

Darren Yapi - He's got one more season to prove he can make an impact, maybe

No Coach Yet? OK, POTY And Prediction Recap

Well, all signs were pointing towards a coach announcement this week, but here we are on Thursday night watching the Kraken beating the Avs (Fear the Deep!) and no announcement yet.  Teams usually don't make announcements like a coaching hire on a Friday, unless they want it to get lost in the weekend so I'm assuming we won't hear anything until next week.  If we don't hear by a week from now eyebrows should be raised.

In the absence of a new coach lets look back at this season, if we must.  Instead of going back and looking at who I gave man of the match to each game I'm going with a gut feel for this one, mainly because there's really only 3 players in the running IMO.  

• William Yarbrough, for being the rock in the back until his injury.
• Conor Ronan, for making what little offense we had go.
• Cole Bassett, for being the Golden Boot and actually speaking some truth and caring about this club.

In the end it was that last piece that made the decision for me.  In a season where it seemed like the team just gave up in multiple games and nobody seemed to care, Bassett did.  You could see it at the final whistle of the season finale.  Losing for a fourth time to FSL, a third time in our house, to end the worst season in club history obviously hurt him.  He stood for a couple of minutes midway between the box and the center circle staring at the ground just trying to come to grips with what happened.  Even when he turned and joined the team to thank the supporters you could read the pain on his face.  Combined with some of the comments he made in post-game interviews, especially late int he season, you could tell that if anyone in the locker room cared it was him.  In a season where nobody played well, at least Cole realized it wasn't acceptable.

I won't disagree with anyone who goes with Ronan or Yarbrough.  They are certainly worthy of the award this season.

And then we get to the annual tradition of reviewing my predictions to see how badly I did.  I'll warn you this year was really bad.  But, here we go!

• Colorado, on the back of great goalkeeping from Ilic, beats a lower league side in their first USOC game but then gets eliminated by a MLS side in the next round

I'm claiming this one as accurate as we did beat a lower-league side and then got eliminated by a MLS side.  Technically it was two lower-league sides and we didn't need great goalkeeping, but close enough.

• The Rapids surprise some people and actually make it out of the group stage of the Leagues Cup, getting a draw in Nashville and beating Toluca at home.  But one knockout match is all they get

LOL, no

• We bring the Rocky Mountain Cup home by beating FSL on the last day of the season

I literally could not have been more wrong on this one

• With that win Colorado leapfrogs FSL into 7th place, avoiding the wild-card play-in game and qualifying for the playoffs

• But its one series and done again, but with the new format at lease we get a home game

I said this was going to go poorly for me...

• The summer transfer window is quiet for the Rapids, other than exercising Ilic's purchase clause.  No other major moves are made (in or out) but some depth is added

I wanted to take half credit but that seems like a stretch.  We did bring in Gutman and loaned in Navarro and Tavares (though the latter does seem like no more than a depth move) .

• By midseason Ilic will be the clear #1 in net

Ilic only became the starter because of Yarbrough's injury, though I expect he'll be the starter when we start next season.

• Diego Rubio wins the team Golden Boot with double-digit goals but less than 15

Bassett was the Golden Boot, and with significantly less than double-digit goals

• Cole Bassett is the team MVP, cementing his status as an everyday starter and getting interest from Europe again by the end of the season

Taking full credit on this one, especially as his game improved once Little took over.  I doubt he has much European interest but the rest is accurate. 

• Jack Price returns to being one of the most underrated players in the league

One of the big "what if's" of this season is Jack's injury.  Without that maybe we see a very different team.

• Maxsø is the clear defensive player of the year and makes a push for the league's best XI

I think he's better than he showed, but based on his play he's not even a definite starter right now

• Ronan and Max both struggle to claim the third starting spot in midfield, creating a rotation all season

Half credit.  Max certainly won't be a starter, and Ronan did have a dip in midseason that had Max been available would had led to a rotation I think.  Still by the end of the season he was clearly a starter.

• Cabral finds himself in Colorado and while he doesn't live up to the DP money the Galaxy paid to sign him does justify the GAM we traded to bring him here.  10 or more goals + assists this year.

Nope, not even close.  3 total goals+assists and nowhere near justifying any of his price 

• Yapi shows he's a year away still, but really looks set for a big 2024

Half credit, as Yapi might have been a year away from being a year away this season

4 out of 14 possible points.  4.5 if I want to be really generous.  I had 4.5 out of 12 last year, 5.5 of 11 the year before that, and 8 of 11 in 2020.  I'm getting worse by the season. 

One More Name To Add

Late last week one more name was added to the coaching list, Pa-Modou Kah.  Kah is former defender who is Gambian by birth but his family emigrated to Norway when he was 8 and he played for the Norwegian national team 10 times.  He played in Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia before he finished his 19-year career playing for Portland and Vancouver.  He immediately moved into coaching as an assistant with both Vancouver and Cincinnati before taking over Pacific FC in the Canadian Premier League, taking them to the title in his second season there.  He was then offered the job as the coach of North Texas (aka FC Dallas 2) which he took for one season before spending 2023 as an assistant in Charlotte.

So what we have is another manager with experience as a MLS assistant and a little head coaching experience (two seasons in Victoria BC with Pacific FC).  This matches up well with Chris Little and rumored name Efrain Juarez.  With Kah, Little, and Armas supposedly on the final 4 list that means either Juarez or Jack Wilshere is not a finalist (possibly both of them aren't).  If I had to guess its Wilshere that's no longer a finalist.  He's the only one of the 5 names that doesn't have any MLS experience, and he's also the one most likely to take his name out of consideration given his current situation and the possibility of getting an offer in the future.

With the names leaking late next week I'm expecting a decision shortly.  I would not be shocked if we hear at least an unconfirmed report if not an official announcement tomorrow, and I'll be very surprised if we don't get an announcement sometime this week.

Based on the names we know, I'd prefer Juarez, followed by Kah, with Wilshere an interesting wildcard.  If its Little or Armas its a very bad sign.

Rapids Reportedly Down To Final 4 Including...Chris Armas?!?!

After some time off I was planning to get into some post-season analysis tonight, but this afternoon there were reports that the Rapids are close to naming the new manager, with a final 4 that includes interim coach Chris Little and new name Chris Armas.  The only other two names seriously linked to the job have been Jack Wilshere and Efrain Juarez.  So a quick recap on the first three and then more on Armas at the end:

• Jack Wilshere

Current Arsenal U-18's coach, a position he took last summer (2022) after retiring from a 13 year playing career, primarily with Arsenal.  34 caps with England.  Took the U18s to the U18 FA Cup final last season.

• Efrain Juarez

Recently joined Club Brugge as an assistant after being at Standard Liege as an assistant last season, and NYCFC as an assistant the three years before that.  In all of those spots Ronny Deila was the manager while Juarez was his right hand man.  Before that a 13 year playing career in Mexico, Europe, and MLS and  almost 40 caps with Mexico.

• Chris Little

Obviously was the interim manager of the Rapids after Fraser was fired, leading the team to a 1 PPG average in his 8 games.  Has a 20+ year career of being an assistant in MLS and lower leagues, and a head coach of youth/reserve teams or college teams.  A very short playing career before he became a coach.

• Chris Armas

Armas is the new name here, but isn't a new name to American soccer fans.  Armas had a long MLS career with the Chicago Fire and the National Team.  He missed out on the 2002 World Cup after blowing out his knee in a match that spring, which opened the door for Pablo Mastroeni to take his place on that roster.  After retirement he was an assistant in Chicago and NY, with a stint as a college women's coach in-between.  In 2018 when Jesse Marsch left for Red Bull Salzburg Armas was promoted to head coach and led RBNY for 2.5 seasons before being fired near the end of 2020.  After that he was hired as Toronto's head coach that offseason, but was fired after 15 games.  Since then he's been an assistant at Manchester United and Leeds, again under Marsch, being promoted to co-interim manager when Marsch was let go.

Chris Armas is largely considered to have been one of the worst coaches in recent MLS history.  He took over a Supporters Shield leading RBNY side in 2018 and kept them in that position, but in their first playoff game that year immediately changed their tactics and lost 3-0 at home to Atlanta, leading to a 3-1 series loss in the first round.  Each year after that the team got worse, dropping to 6th (12th overall) in 2019 and 6th (13th overall) in the COVID-shortened 2020 season and crashing out of the MLS Is Back tournament in the group stage.

His time in Toronto was worse.  Hired in the 2020-21 offseason he won 1 of his first 11 league games (along with 2 draws) an was fired after a 7-1 loss to DC on July 4th.  That's a 0.45 PPG rate in Toronto. 

The idea that Armas is a finalist for Colorado just reiterates that this organization is deeply unserious about being competitive.  The near universal response to this news across MLS social media tonight is sympathy for Rapids fans that might have to put up with their club hiring him.  He has shown no ability to manage a team in any sort of successful way, his greatest success came when the team was set up for him with investment and coaching by Jesse Marsch and Red Bull, two things he won't have in Commerce City.  The only box he checks is that he's cheap and desperate to get another chance.

In these four candidates you have a youth coach, an assistant coach who's made a career for working for one manager, an internal hire that has no top-level management experience, and a retread who's been fired by two other MLS clubs (who in recent times have appeared to be almost as poorly run as the Rapids).  None of these guys are likely to come in and turn this organization around.  At least with Wilshere it would be an indicator of trying to do something different, and Juarez has some experience in Europe and maybe some connections in Mexico (and has been the right-hand man for a solid manager).  there's a possibility that they could be a surpising young manager.  Little or Armas would be very poor choices that would set this team back even further from the hole they're already in.  No other team would even consider them for the role (though I understand why you would leave the current interim who's under contract for next season in the running until the end).