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.
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