Backpass: Bits and Bobs
CCL, Superdraft, and just waitin', waitin', waitin' on any interesting Rapids news.
There’s not a lot to report in this quietest of quiet phases for MLS. Sure, lots of things are going on behind the scenes - this is the final week before the European transfer window opens, and so the management of every MLS team is sending and receiving emails at a furious pace, hoping to lock down that disgruntled bench player from Lyon or the aging striker nobody wants to pay for in La Liga. But you and I aren’t privy to that info. If you want the latest rumor, just keep your twitter feed tuned to Sam Stejskal and Paul Tenorio for transfer news.
Where once upon a time I would get manifestly excited at the waiver draft, re-entry draft, and free agent list, I’m now older and wiser. There are some intriguing possibilities on those lists: Fatai Alashe as a spare midfielder; Ozzie Alonso alongside Jack Price in a 4-2-3-1; Aaron Schoenfeld as a poaching number 9; Luis Robles as our GK in case Yarbrough goes back to Mexico; Brek Shea in burgundy. But really, there’s nobody available besides Kevin Molino that would truly be an impact player for the Rapids, and I feel like Molino is going to end up with whichever MLS team is willing to obscenely overpay for him. And that’s not the Rapids.
Matt and I still had a lot to ramble about this past week on the podcast. But here in Backpass I’ll hit up some of the strange odds and ends that came to mind for me over the past few days.
The call is coming from inside the house
Last week I said the obvious about the Rapids move to re-sign practically everyone: “The central philosophy behind the Rapids offseason moves is clearly ‘we like what we’ve got, and with a little tinkering we can go far.’”
In focusing on Danny Wilson and some of the more senior players, though, I neglected to say the other important thing: the Rapids are really optimistic on the potential contribution of their young players. Clearly, they think this is the year to see the emergence of some of their younger players like Cole Bassett, Sam Vines, Braian Galvan, Auston Trusty, and perhaps even Matt Hundley. Those players are all under 23 years old. In addition, the Rapids have several players who are maturing into their ‘in their prime’ years of 23 to 27. Count amongst that crowd Kellyn Acosta and Lalas Abubakar, Jonathan Lewis and Andre Shinyashiki, Keegan Rosenberry and Younes Namli. The average age on the current Rapids roster is a young-but-not-too-young 25.84 years old. Like a fine bottle of wine, figuring out when to open it is a big deal - too soon and it hasn’t developed enough flavor. Too late and there’s a chance it has turned to vinegar.
Colorado may be effectively treating Galvan and Hundley like ‘big offseason pickups’ who were there all along. If those guys can get into the first team and bring a spark, and the rest of the roster gets a little bit better than in 2020, things could be really good.
Concacaf Champions League is Madness
The craziest thing in CCL this year was not the nine-month delay between the first and second leg matches of the quarterfinals. It was not Memo Ochoa baiting and flopping to coax Eduard Atuesta into a red card in last Thursday’s semi-final between Club America and LAFC. It was not Honduran team Olimpia chewing through two MLS teams on its way to a surprise semi-final appearance. Nor was it Carlos Vela scoring a brace while down 10 men to push LAFC into the final against UNAL Tigres of Monterrey.
Nope. The craziest thing was the moment I discovered that CCL had not adopted VAR this year.
I shouldn’t be that naive, but alas, I am.
American soccer fans who watch CCL are familiar with Concacaf, as well as Concacafery and the term ‘Concacaf’d’. When Panama scored a phantom goal in October 2017 against Costa Rica that knocked the US out of the 2018 World Cup, that was the textbook definition of Concacaf’d. Concacaf is watching an 8pm game in which the referee is handing out red cards to players that bump opponents more gently than I used to rock my babies, and then watching the follow-up 10pm match and seeing a full-on ax-swinging melee break out on the pitch, and nobody gets called for a foul at all. Concacaf is concrete bowl stadiums surrounded by jungles, and pitches with their corners submerged underwater. Concacaf is the federation where both your current AND your immediate past-president get indicted by the US Justice Department in a criminal probe.
That said, in a league with a history of poor officiating, shady business, and third-rate off-brand tv contracts, it is imperative that there be video review going forward. The dodgy calls between LAFC and Club America were shockingly bad - an obvious PK call was missed, followed by Guillermo Ochoa’s ridiculous flop that should have been punished for its crass cynicism.
MLS and Liga MX still desperately want to be treated with the respect of larger and more successful leagues in Europe, but they still let rinky-dink antics upstage the competition itself.
VAR would go a long way to improving the legitimacy of this competition. It’s quite enjoyable with all its madcap drama - the midnight horns-and-fireworks serenading of the MLS teams by Central American fans in an attempt to gain an edge. Keep that stuff. But lose the full shadiness of unreviewable calls, please. ASAP.
Don’t settle for off-brand strikers
‘“(He) is a very strong addition to our attack,” said Rapids Executive Vice President & General Manager, Pádraig Smith. “He’s a natural goal-scorer, and his pace and boldness inside the box will help create space for others.’*
This is what our GM said about the eminently forgettable Yannick Boli back in March 2018. Boli would go on to look out-of-shape and off-target for the 2018 Rapids. He would score 2 goals that year - the same number as Jack McBean. (I suppose it could have been worse - we could have paid more than almost a million a year for him.) But really, this was what happens when you buy a striker who was a pretty good goal scorer four or five years ago, but you conveniently ignore his current age and the fact that he’s been playing for hard-to-pronounce teams in leagues with little comparable track record to speak of.
The Rapids, of course, find themselves back in the predictable territory of needing a successful striker for 2021. After a 2019 season in which Kei Kamara had an impressive 12 goals, he came back to earth in 2020 with just 3. Kei Kamara was solid at what he does, which is to pound in the ball with his head on set pieces. Kei’s g+ was a pretty awful -1.51, though, mostly on some really bad passing numbers, and that eventually led the team to swap him to Minnesota for the relatively low price of $150K in GAM. His replacement, Diego Rubio, had one exceptional game on September 12, scoring an electrifying brace against RSL to help steal the Rocky Mountain Cup away from the claret and cobalt. He bookended that match by having not scored in 9 matches before that game, and he did not score in the 7 matches to follow.
So a steady number nine seems like an obvious need.
But the knee jerk reaction to ‘spend a million on an available 28 to 30-year-old scorer from abroad’ has been pretty failure-ific for the ‘Pids historically. From Gabriel Torres to Kevin Doyle to Luis Solignac to Yannick Boli, Colorado have spent a lot for not-a-lot through the years. Maybe give the job to Andre Shinyashiki? Or maybe spend ‘a lot a lot’ on a DP who actually is a sure thing? Or snag two cheap young guys with promise and give ‘em a whirl? 2019 Superdraft pick Robbie Robinson can probably be had for a fair price. The USL’s Tyler Pasher and Junior Flemmings were big scorers in 2020 in the second-division league. There are other options besides the path Colorado has followed for the past couple of years.
Re-entry, Free agency and Superdraft
As mentioned above, there’s not a lot of exciting players on the market within MLS via re-entry or free agency.
I’m also a little pessimistic about the upcoming 2021 MLS Superdraft. Most years, I’m a huge proponent of the players coming out of the NCAA, and the Rapids have done really well by the Superdraft - Dominique Badji, Axel Sjoberg, Marlon Hairston, Andre Shinyashiki and Niki Jackson all came to the Rapids that way. But this year’s Superdraft comes in a truncated NCAA year in which multiple leagues - the PAC-12, Big 10, Big East and Ivy League - didn’t play at all, and the ACC and SEC has shortened years. I covered the ACC for local Pittsburgh soccer website PittsburghSoccerNow.com, and I saw few exciting MLS prospects.
The Rapids recently made a trade to move up to the 6th spot in the draft by giving the Chicago Fire $125,000 in GAM. Maybe they have a target in mind, like in 2019 when they moved up aggressively in order to get Shinyashiki, a Rapids U-23 player who coaches were extremely impressed with. But I think it just as likely that the Rapids know that a Superdraft pick is like a scratcher lottery ticket - it usually doesn’t turn into anything, but if the price is cheap enough, it’s a good holiday stocking stuffer, nonetheless.
One, two, or three-year project?
Friend and local Denver soccer nut Kellen Abreu asked me an astute question today.
This is the kind of question that never results in a square and honest answer when you put it to a GM or a coach. The only answer you can give in December, January, and February to your loyal fans who are trying to decide between ‘buy a season ticket package’ and ‘wait till June to see if the Rapids are any good’ is to tell the press “We think we can win it all right now.” I remember Mastroeni saying it in 2017; I remember Hudson saying it in 2018; I think Fraser said some iteration of it in 2019.
Based on my comments above about the age of the team, and the Rapids fervent effort to re-sign darn near everybody, it very much feels to me like the future is now in Commerce City. Colorado clearly aren’t one of the strongest teams in the Western Conference - that’ll continue to be big money, big talent clubs like Seattle and LAFC. But if their current roster progresses and even overachieves a bit, they could finish in a solid playoff spot and make a cup run in 2021 or 2022. With two open DP spots, the Rapids are in a position to take a good situation and make it better. Even if they opt to wait and see rather than pay for one more big player, this team is ready to make some noise, right now.