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.