Its Groundhog Day...Again

I picked a great week to be offline from the blog didn't I?  Of course the big news is that Armas won't be returning next season.  I covered my thoughts on that in my prior post so I'm not going to repeat that here  The key is now who we look at going forward.  So far only one name has leaked out, Australian John Aloisi, who's managed the Melbourne Heart, Brisbane Roar, and currently Western United, all in the Australian A-League.  He's expressed interest but its unclear if the Rapids have talked to him yet.

The other big incident last week was the press availability for Padraig Smith and Kevin Demoff, President of Team and Media Operations for KSE.  I wasn't able to watch it live due to my work travel, but I did go back and review it.  My first reaction was one of exhaustion.  Its the same old song and dance from Padraig Smith that we heard in 2023, and 2019, and 2017.  "Trust me, we have a plan" and all that.  Well, I don't trust him.  Nothing in the last 8+ years suggests I should.  Honestly, there was a point where I thought about not writing this blog post because I'm just so tired of this.

The one notable difference this time was the presence of Kevin Demoff.  This is the first time since KSE put Smith in charge when Hinchey went to USA Swimming that somebody from KSE has shown up for the Rapids.  In the notes I took there were only three comments from Padraig that I wrote down but there were a dozen or more from Demoff.  Really his comments and his presence were the most significant things about the press conference.

With the caveat that this is all talk and we need to see action, there were two main themes that came out of his comments.  One, that they want to draw the Rapids closer to the rest of the KSE operations than they've been in the past.  Of course that's not a hard bar to clear since its always seemed that the Rapids were off on their own in the bigger picture.  There was lots of talk about how Colorado needs to be able to take advantage of connections with Arsenal, the Rams, etc.  In fact Demoff probably talked too much about the Rams in particular.  MLS is not the NFL.

The second big focus was accountability.  Demoff said, very plainly, that "this club should be competing for titles.  Full stop." and "This club should be competing for MLS Cup year end and year out".  So, it makes it very easy then for the fans to apply that accountability.  Are we realistically competing for MLS Cup?  Something you could argue we've only done 4 times in 30 seasons (1997, 2010, 2016, and 2021).  At the same time though, Demoff hedged his bets by saying that "People have to hold us accountable from here", which means Smith is off the hook for the last 8 seasons of failure and KSE is off the hook for only one title in 20+ seasons.

One thing the duo sadly made clear was that there isn't going to be a seismic shift in strategy with the team.  Both made refence to the idea that there's "no correlation between spending and winning in MLS" and pointing out Philly's success with the cheapest roster and Atlanta's failure with one of the most expensive.  Of course anyone who's watched MLS for any length of time recognizes that both of those our outliers.  Braidon Nourse did the math, the teams in the top half of spending finish 13th on average, the bottom half, 18th.  Removing the two outliers changes those numbers to 12th and 20th.  If you're in the top half of spending you're about three times more likely to make the playoffs.  

The coaching search sounds like its going to be similar.  Demoff used the examples of the Rams, Avs, and Nuggets where they found a young up and coming coach and then built around him with younger players.  They did talk about how those other leagues allow for a "draft and develop" strategy in a way MLS does not, but a year ago Colorado went all in on the draft by trading for all of Philly's picks for 3 seasons.  Which kind of shows that we're not following Philly's road map for being successful with a low salary spend.  So expect the new coach to be a young guy who's getting his first shot at managing.

In the end this was the same talk we've heard time and time again.  The silver lining to it was that KSE does seem to be taking more interest for once.  Now they have to back that up with actual action.  I do think its notable that Demoff was present and said things like the same leadership team should not be choosing a fourth coach.  He fell back on him only being in the role for 18 months and not having a lot to go on, but it wasn't hard to read between the lines of all the accountability talk to see that with Smith being in a contract year its doe or die time for Padraig.  I don't think he has to win MLS Cup to save his job, but another poor year where we miss the playoffs and I wouldn't be surprised that KSE makes a change.

There were a couple of pieces of news in amongst the talk.  Maxso, as expected, is returning to Europe (or potentially the Middle East).  Also Padraig mentioned we have a couple of free agents who will be investigating their options elsewhere.  He called out Larraz specifically as somebody who's looking at Europe but he did say free agents, plural, so I'm guessing Calvin Harris is also looking at his options and may not be back.  He's the only other free agent this year unless we decline an option on another veteran player.

There's really more I could rant about, like Demoff saying the "stadium is perfectly good enough if we deliver" (its not) or that "I have spent as much time on the Rapids in this new role as I have any other club" (sure, how gullible do you think we are) but eventually you just want to take this Groundhog Day cycle off, or my personal favorite time loop story, Stargate SG-11's Window of Opportunity.  Its disheartening to see the same clichés rolled out time and time again and I'd be very happy for KSE to prove me wrong this time.  I just don't expect them to do it.