From Goal Bassett To Gone Bassett

Tom Bogert broke the news early this evening and its been confirmed by Nourse at the Post and Burgundy Wave.  Cole Bassett is being sold to Portland for $2.65M and 1.05M in performance add-ons.  The Rapids retain a sell-on percentage.

A stunning move by Padraig Smith and (presumably) Matt Wells.  Bassett is the best homegrown player the Rapids academy has ever developed.  He was probably the player most likely to be the next addition to the Gallery of Honor in 10-15 years, and he's only 24.  Instead the majority of his career will now not be in Colorado.  He's also the long-time face of the team in the Colorado market.

Bassett was an expected starter in 4 weeks and started the one preseason match that has been played so far, setting up Yapi for the only Colorado goal of the game.  Bogert's report says the relationship between Cole and the club "remains strong" which doesn't suggest that Bassett asked out.  Tom also said that multiple clubs had asked about him this offseason.

There is a new manager with a new style of play.  Its possible that Wells doesn't see Bassett as the player he wants in the midfield 8 position.  Or maybe he's not planning to use an 8 at all.  If that's the case A. I think that's a poor decision given the rest of our roster but also B. it does make Bassett the most valuable asset we have to move.

Two years ago this month I wrote an article for Burgundy Wave about how Padraig Smith's methodology seemed to map to the one laid out in Soccernomics.  One of the principles of that methodology is "Sell any player if some club offers more than he’s worth.".  That's followed by this quote:

Buying and selling players is not an activity for improving soccer performance. It’s a trading activity in which we produce gross margin. If an offer for a player is greatly superior to his market value, you must not keep him

This move feels like it falls into that rule.  We got an offer for Bassett we were happy with, so we sold him.

The only reason I'm not fully convinced is that $2.65M guaranteed is too low  for what Bassett means to this club on and off the field.  We got $8M for a 26 year old Mihailovic (and that seemed low), we get barely a third of that for a 24 year old Bassett?  This doesn't seem like being offered "more than he's worth", especially if multiple teams were asking.  Essentially selling Cole paid off what we paid for Sealy.  Those two do not feel like equal players.

If we had gotten the full $3.7M up front it would make more sense.  Maybe those performance goals are so low we think we're going to get the full amount without difficulty and breaking them out just let it fit into Portland's budget?

The real problem I have with this, beyond the low number, is the timing.  We are 26 days from the season opener.  If this was going to be our major move of the offseason (so far) it needed to happen in December so we could spend the money we got before the season starts.  Now whomever we spent the money on has to be negotiated, signed, and processed in less than a month.  Unless that player(s) is American or already has a visa its a safe bet they won't be in Seattle for the season opener.  So once again we're starting the season at less than full strength.

With Mihailovic, Larraz, and Bassett all gone we have lost 6500 2025 minutes from or midfield in the last 5 months.  Obviously we should expect Aaronson to take a third of those.  But what about the other two-thirds?  Hamzat?  Atencio?  Ronan?  Unknown signing?  Going back to my post two weeks ago we now need ether another signing or another young player like Atencio to step up just to get us back to our 2025 levels.  This offseason is not filling me with a lot of hope that we're going to see a significant improvement in 2026.  We seem to be going all in on Matt Wells being the secret to unlock this roster.