Its Like Deja Vu All Over Again

You'd be forgiven if you thought you had already heard today's news out of the Rapids because its all very familiar.

First of all the team announced the loan of left-back Miguel Navarro from Tallares in Argentina.  If that sounds familiar its because last offseason we sold Navarro to Tallares after having loaned him there for the 2024 season.  To recap:

In December of 2023 we traded left back Andrew Gutman to Chicago for a bunch of GAM and Navarro.  A month later we found out Sam Vines was available and brought him back, making Navarro expendable.  We loaned Navarro to Tallares at that point with an option to buy, which they exercised.

Of course after that we went into last season and realized that Vines wasn't the old Vines.  We tried using Jackson Travis there, but that didn't work out either.  So we traded for Rafael Santos from Orlando and he was more solid than either of the other two.  Of course we declined his option at the end of last season and let him walk and he signed with St. Louis.

So a week before the season starts our options were back to Jackson Travis and Sam Vines, options that didn't work last season.  Or at least, that's what we thought.  It turns out that Navarro was already in camp and training with the team, he was probably the 'Trialist' that subbed in to the Orlando game for the Rapids.  He has a green card already so he'll be eligible as soon as FIFA processes the transfer.

I have to ask though, what are we doing?  Since we sold Vines in mid 2021 we've signed Lucas Esteves, Alex Gersbach, traded for Andrew Gutman, signed Jackson Travis as a home grown, traded for Miguel Navarro, re-signed Sam Vines, traded for Rafael Santos, and now reacquired Miguel Navarro to fill the left back hole.  8 players (one twice) for one role in 4.5 years.  Now our plan is to spend money to get a player we already had under contract 15 months ago.  While I can't really blame the FO for going for Vines when he was available and making him the starter (imagine how mad we would have been if he signed somewhere else in MLS?) not working to get Navarro back when Vines started faltering in 2024 or keeping Santos after last season seems like a more efficient plan than this.

Later in the afternoon the Rapids held their season kickoff press conference with head Coach Matt Wells, Team President Padraig Smith, and KSE President of Team Operations Kevin Demoff.  Again, fi this event seemed familiar and repetitive its because it was.  We saw Demoff and Smith say largely the same things in their end-of-season presser in November, and we've seen Smith say these same things over and over during the last 8.5 years he's been in charge of the team.  Essentially "trust us, we've got it right this time because of A, B, and C".  Yeah, I've heard that one before.

The one notable quote was from Kevin Demoff when asked what a successful season looks like.

Our expectation is to compete for MLS Cup and a successful season is taking meaningful steps in that direction and being in that conversation

So that's the expectation.  Meaningful steps towards winning MLS Cup.  I have my doubts but we'll see.

Honestly the best part of the quote was that he prefaced it with coming at it from a different angle having just finished a season in the NFL where they lost in the NFC championship and is that successful season.  That's right, Dark Side defense baby!  Go Hawks!

So yeah, a day of repetition for the Rapids.  We'll see what comes next, hopefully not a repeat of the 2025 season.

Navarro Deal Done

This morning the Rapids made the Navarro deal official.  He's signed through 2027 with a team option for 2028.  No official announcement of the transfer fee but the 3.5 million dollar number has been reported by multiple outlets.

This is a big move for the Rapids.  If I had to quibble if this were a perfect world I would have liked to see the Rapids spend 2.5 million and then add on an incentive level for the last 1 million, only because Navarro's scoring numbers look slightly inflated compared to his advanced stats.  But that doesn't by any means make this a bad deal and obviously Palmeiras wouldn't necessarily agree to anything less than $3.5M.

Now we go into the summer window knowing we've got our starting 9 and 10 locked down for the long-term.  That allows us to look at filling out our last major need, a 6, as well as building up our depth (especially at CB and winger).  Of course if Bombito does get sold then we have another hole to fill.

Diack Out, Navarro In?

Tommy Scoops, aka The Athletic's Tom Bogert, had two pieces of Rapids news today.

Let's start with the more concrete one.  The Rspids will not be buying Lamine Diack.  This is no surprise considering how little time he's gotten, just 16 minutes across 4 games.  Later today Padraig Smith was on the DNVR Rapids podcast and talked about how Connor Ronan's injury really hurt Diack's chances, as that led to the successful double-pivot with Larraz and Bassett, which made it hard for him to get time.

I think that clearly explains why he never got a chance to start.  It doesn't fully explain why he hasn't made the gameday squad in the last 6 games, despite them happening in 2 sets of 3-games-in-a-week runs where squad rotation has been necessary.  Clearly regardless of the success of Larraz and Löffelsend dealing with injuries there was something that kept Armas from picking Diack.  Maybe its as simple as them figuring out by early May that they weren't going to pick up the option and prioritizing players under contract.

Diack got a guaranteed compensation of $864,150.  That number will likely be prorated for his time here though.  So since we're at the halfway point of the season we paid him $432,075 for 16 minutes of work.  That's $27K per minute of play.  Needless to say this move was a complete bust.  We spent $75K (prorated) of TAM plus his loan fee, used up an international slot, and didn't solve one of the biggest holes we had going into the las offseason, defensive midfield.  We landed on Diack as one of 4 players we were reportedly targeting in the offseason.  As I pointed out in January going with Diack over the other options was a very 'classic Rapids' move where we take a flyer on a young player on a loan with the hope it pays off instead of filling a need with a known quantity.  The only good news here is that we realized he didn't work before pulling the trigger and being stuck with him (see Ilic, Marko).

On to better news.  Tom is also reporting that the negotiations over Navarro are going well.  There's work still to be done but everyone is on-board with getting it over the line.  Unfortunately his improved play has sparked interest from other teams driving up the price, which means the hope of structuring the deal in a way that would allow him to be a max-TAM players instead of a DP is not going to work out.

Going into and through the first month of the season it didn't look like Navarro was going to be worth retaining.  He's really settled in ow and is looking like potentially the best striker we've had since the Conor Casey days.  Right now he's at 9 goals and 3 assists at the midway point.  Doubling that would be 18 and 6, which would be a new team record for goals and goals+assists in a season.  I think 18 goals might be a stretch given that he's had his last two PK's saved and he can't expect to get 4 more PK goals in the second half, but tying Casey and Rubio's team record at 16 seems possible.

I don't think he's worth the originally negotiated price of $4.5 million.  He probably needed to make those 2 saved PKs and have another couple of goals from the run of play to consider that.  But if we could get him for under $2.5M?   That would still be solid work.

Welcome Rafael Navarro!

A big weekend for the Rapids as they got their first home win (we'll be reviewing that in the next post) and signed Brazilian striker Rafael Navarro on a 12-month loan from Palmeiras with an option to buy.  That option is a reported $4.5 million dollar deal, which would be a record signing for this team (there's a $500K loan fee already agreed to). Navarro will be available as soon as his visa is complete (though even if he had it today he would not be eligible to play Wednesday night since that's a continuation of a game that started before he was signed).

Navarro is 23 years old and got his start at Botafogo in the Brazilian second division where he scored 19 times in 62 appearances and was the 3rd leading scorer in the league the season Botafogo won it.  He was then signed by Palmeiras (same club as Lucas Esteves came to us from on loan) at the end of 2021.  He's only scored twice in 41 league appearances for them but almost all of those were coming off the bench.  He played the last 17 minutes for them in the Club World Cup final against Chelsea and he's scored 8 times in 13 appearances in the Copa Libertadores.

With this signing the Rapids have 3 Designated Players (Navarro, Cabarl, Maxso) for the first time since 2016 when they had Gashi, Doyle, and Howard.  He'll obviously slot right into the starting XI once he's cleared to play.  There's nobody else healthy on the roster that has this track record.  Once Rubio is back then we will likely see both of them starting.  Cabral will either move to the wing or the bench, and Yapi and Lewis will become subs.  This was a big piece of what we needed in this window.  The key will be is if he can show he's worth the $4.5M tag by next July, though the Rapids have a history of agreeing to buy clauses and then renegotiating them so its possible we could bring him in permanently at a lower number.

Also, following on from my rant on Friday night about Mark Ilic's loan details, the Rapids Communication Director had a public response to me on Twitter that its only fair that I link to here, so that you can read both sides of the issue.  I don't think there's any more to say on that subject at this point.