MVP And Season Summary

Ok, now that we've had a couple of weeks to decompress from the season we have to ask the question.  Was it successful?

I think you have to say it was.  Yeah, it ended on a sour note with the team in a tailspin but in March if somebody had told you we'd win the Rocky Mountain Cup, finish 3rd in the Leagues Cup, claim a CCC spot, and clinch a playoff spot with 6 weeks to play you'd take that every time.

That's not to say there isn't room for improvement.  When we lost we lost bad far too often.  And the reason we crashed and burned late was a lack of depth forcing us to play our top guys way too many minutes this season.

The main thing we need to work on though is our defense.  We actually gave up 6 more goals this season than we did last season.  No team that made it past the play-in round gave up more goals than we did.  The reason we were successful this year was scoring a full goal a game more than we did in 2023.  Whatever Armas' defensive strategy is, it doesn't work.  

Early in the season the manager gave an interview to one of the blogs (Burgundy Wave?) where he mentioned his tactical belief that that outside edges of the penalty box were the key areas where goals were created.  On the offense he seems to have created something that works, as we scored the second most goals in a season in our history (1998, 64 goals in only 32 games).  However defensively it appears the instructions to the outside backs were to pinch in and defend that space in the box.  But that let oppositions wingers stand off and whip crosses into the box without pressure which killed us.

Negatives aside though, having the best offensive season in our "modern" MLS history is a huge step forward.  There are plenty of positives to build on going into 2025.  We've got a good spine of Navarro, Maihailovic, Bassett, Larraz, Maxso, and if he can be more consistent, Steffen to build around.  More on the specifics of what we need in a later post but this is a team that should expect to make the playoffs again in 2025, and hopefully this time win a series.

Now on to the MVP of the season.

That's right, I'm going with Cole Bassett as the MVP.  I know that Mihailovic had the best offensive season in terms of goal contributions in team history.  If you want to name him the MVP I will not argue with that.  To me though what allowed Mihailovic to do what he did was having Bassett sitting in behind him.  We saw that when Cole was out to finish the season that the offense dried up.  Navarro had 1 goal and Mihailovic had 1 assist in the 6 games Bassett missed to finish the season.

This was a year that Cole could have mailed in after the disappointment of missing out on the Olympic Team (especially after he was told he was on the team and then had his spot taken away).  He put a lot into the making the team in the first half of the season and he could have let the mistake made by the coaching staff (IMO) send him into a spiral.  Instead he put all the frustration into the team and led them to the Rocky Mountain Cup (scoring the winning PK) and drove the team on their Leagues Cup run.

Bassett was in the talk for the leagues best XI and guys like Doyle and Bogert had him, if not in their first team, in their honorable mentions.  In a league with midfielder like Puig and Acosta and of course the GOAT to stand out like that is impressive.  Again, I won't argue against Mihailovic but I think Bassett was the most valuable player for the Rapids this season.