Colorado Trades Mark-Anthony Kaye To Toronto

Rumors were swirling earlier this week that Toronto was interested in reuniting Kaye and Bradley.  Many (including myself) dismissed it as a single report from the Toronto side that felt like the "big" team trying to bully the "little" team into making a move.  Well, the move is being made.  No official announcement yet but the deal is reportedly done:

    Toronto gets Kaye

    Colorado gets $1M in GAM, midfielder Ralph Priso, an international slot in 2023, and TFC's 1st round pick next year

Overall that's a sizeable haul.  Last summer we traded $1M of GAM and an international slot for 2022 to get Kaye, so a year later we've added a 1st round pick and a young player to his value.  Long term this looks like a solid move.

But for 2022?  This feels a lot like throwing in the towel on the season.  As Joseph Samelson pointed out, the 2021 team has lost Vines (who left midway through), Bassett, Badji, Acosta, Shinyashiki, Mezquida, Trusty*, and now Kaye.  Essentially in 8 months we've gone from the top of the West to a rebuilding project.  The thing is, if you look at any of those 8 moves on their own, all of them look like solid, smart moves.  The problem is, again as Joseph put it, the Front Office failed to bring in adequate replacements.  We traded Acosta because we ere going to pivot from him and build our midfield around Kaye, but that wasn't working.  We moved on from Bassett, but brought in Max, who's shown nothing in MLS play.  We sold Vines and Trusty and brought in Keita who got injured (admittedly, not something you can plan for) and then Vallecilla, who looks like he has potential but is he ready to start?  Looking back now, the offseason was a disaster and we're suffering for it now.

Ralph Priso-Mbongue is a 19 year old defensive minded Canadian midfielder.  He came up through the TFC academy (which means he doesn't need an international slot) and was on TFC III and II while Fraser was still an assistant coach for the first team.  He's played for the Canadian U-15 and U-17 teams and has some real potential.  He's made 12 starts and 25 appearances for the first team over the last 2+ seasons, with 2 goals and 3 assists in just over 1000 minutes.  He got his first full national team camp callup in January but has not yet appeared for the full Nats.

Again though, this is a solid deal than in a year or two we're going to be happy with.  But I don't see a way to the playoffs in 2022 now, unless the Rapids have a midseason window unlike one they've had in a long time.

* - Trusty is not available for tomorrow's match and has played his last game in burgundy

You Get A New Contract! Any You Get A New Contract! And You Get A New Contract!

A busy day in Commerce City as Padraig Smith was handing out contracts like he was Oprah.  4 existing Rapids got contract extensions and we welcomed new signing Bryan Acosta.  Starting with the extensions:

• Defender Keegan Rosenberry got an extension through the 2024 season, with a team option for 2025
• Midfielder Mark-Anthony Kaye got an extension through 2025 with an team option for 2026
• Defender Danny Wilson got an extension through 2023 with team options for 2024 and 2025
• Midfielder and team captain Jack Price got an extension through 2023 with team options for 2024 and 2025

Those last two were originally announced, erroneously, as extensions through 2024 with options for the next two seasons.

These are all great moves for the club, locking up the core of the team for the next 4 seasons.  And with the option years there's flexibility at the end as well.  There was some scuttlebutt that Jack Price might want to go home, but that seems to have been more wishful thinking from some MLSSoccer.com commentators than anything real.

The addition of Bryan Acosta today was probably the big news.  He's on a two-year deal with a team option for 2024.  When he was signed with Dallas he was signed as a DP, but that was due to his transfer fee, so with Colorado he won't fill one of those slots.  His contract last year was for $650K, and the Rapids could have selected him in the first round of the Re-Entry Draft, which would have brought him here on his Dallas contract's option number.  The fact that we didn't do that suggests to me that we only wanted to sign him at a lower number, so he won't be a max salary player this year, though I'm sure he'll be a high earner.

Bryan Acosta is a 28 year old Honduran midfielder.  He's more attack-minded than Kellyn was, and he's particularly skilled at distribution and playing the ball into dangerous spaces.  He does have a very bad habit of taking shots from 35 yards out that end up 35 feet over the goal though.  He also doesn't have the defensive skills of Kellyn, which has me concerned that our midfield will lack the ability to stop players playing through it, resulting in a lot of pressure on our back line.

Acosta is a fairly regular player for the Honduran National Team.  We'll likely see him miss time in late March for the final round of World Cup qualifiers, but barring a miracle turn-around Honduras is not going to qualify (they are in last place, 11 points out of the playoff spot with 6 games left) so that's all the time he should really miss.  While Honduras may play some friendlies over the rest of 2022 I can see the Rapids being somewhat resistant to letting him go outside of any required windows.  This is different from Kaye (or Kellyn) in that there are good chances their teams qualify for Qatar and they'll be needed for warm-ups over the year.

A very busy day of business from Colorado today, and one that largely set the midfield for the next couple of years.  In a Q&A this afternoon Smith talked about the team actively pursuing a #9 signing in this window, so I think that's the last major piece before the season starts.

Welcome Mark-Anthony Kaye!

The Rapids made a big move today, sending $1 million in GAM and an international slot for next year to LAFC for Canadian midfielder Mark-Anthony Kaye and LAFC's first round pick next season.  There are incentives in the deal that could raise the final amount of GAM LAFC gets but from what I'm hearing its not much or its based on the Rapids doing so good we won't care about paying them.  LAFC also retains 10% of any transfer fee the Rapids get after the Rapids get their initial payment back (so 10% of the fee after the first $1M+incentive payments).

Needless to say this is a significant outlay for a player.  Kaye is 26 years old (birthday in December) and is a regular callup for the Canadian National Team.  He's been part of LAFC since they signed him before their inaugural season in 2018, appearing 77 times in 3.5 seasons for them.  Before that he played for Louisville City in the USL and TFC II and TFC III before that.  Coming up through TFC's Academy means he counts as a domestic player even though he's Canadian so he doesn't need an international slot.

This season he's lost playing time as LAFC has shifted formation and his skills have been squeezed out of their midfield.  He's also seems to be making a few more mistakes in defense lately and some LAFC commentators suggested that he needed a change of scenery.  Of course we heard the same thing about Keegan Rosenberry.  And Kellyn Acosta.  And Auston Trusty.  And Michael Barrios.  We aren't becoming known as Distressed Assets FC for nothing.  I have faith that if there are any issues along those lines that Padraig Smith and Robin Fraser know how to get a player back to playing at their best.

IMO this is a real solid move by the club.  It seems to be seen as a very positive move for both teams by neutral fans and commentators around MLS.  There are a number of Rapids fans who are still, somewhat fairly, gun shy after seeing so many deals blow up in our face but the track record of the current FO is one that doesn't make the same mistake twice and one that has a pretty good read on MLS-based players.  (International signings, well, there's still work to do).  

Plus look at how this deal breaks down.  $1M of GAM is the same amount of GAM we're going to get from the Vines sale.  100% of the proceeds from a homegrown player being sold go back to the club, with the first $1M going back to the club as GAM, and the rest going back as funds that have to be reinvested in the club outside of salary/transfer fees (it can't be pocketed.  We're essentially buying Kaye with house money, which is exactly how the youth system is supposed to work.  The international slot in 2022 is meaningless as we have no idea what kind of green cards will be acquired by then, so we can easily work around that.  The 10% sell on clause is nothing.  If we sell Kaye for $2M we'd get $1.9M (our initial cost of $1M plus 90% of everything else) and LAFC would get $100K.  Whatever.

In exchange we get a midfield of Jack Price, possibly the most underrated midfielder in the league, Canadian Nat Mark-Anthony Kaye, and American Nat Kellyn Acosta.  Its hard to say there's a better 3-man midfield in the league.  It gives us some of that bite we've been missing and another threat to score.

You noticed I included Acosta.  My first reaction to this move was that this screamed that we were about to sell him but after some thought and talking to some contacts I think that's less likely.  As well as Acosta has been playing we haven't heard any rumors about offers for him.  This improves the team even if he doesn't get sold in a year where we have a chance to really make some noise.  I think the odd man out here is Bassett.  Its going to be hard to displace those three from the starting lineup.  He's going to have to force Fraser to play a 4-man midfield or hope Acosta spends more time at LB than I expect.  With only 18 months left on his contract this feels more like a plan for him leaving, one way or the other, than Acosta.