Backpass: Eleven Guys, No Team – and Now No Coach
After another dispiriting loss, Robin Fraser is sacked. We comment on the firing, and break down Fraser's final game in search of some clues as to where to start rebuilding this thing.
I had wrongly assumed, until very recently, that the Rapids would limp through the rest of the season with Robin Fraser at the helm simply because there was so little that could be accomplished by his firing. Lame-duck periods are lame. No matter who it is that Rapids President Pádraig Smith would have installed in the event Robin was fired, that person would be destined to be filling in at a temp job – nothing more. So, my logic went, the Rapids will limp along with a draw and a win every few games, and the Front Office will fire Fraser a few days after the final game of the regular season, and that will be that.
Instead, over the past several months, the Rapids could not even scrape together a single passible outing. Colorado looked vibrant and dangerous in a 2-1 win on July 8 against Dallas. They then proceeded to play horrendously bad football for the next eight weeks. From July 12 to September 2, the Rapids were outscored 15 to 2, losing 5 matches and drawing 2. That win over Dallas I mentioned above was preceded by a 10 winless games, in which Colorado was outscored 18 to 5. Eighteen games, one win, stretching back to May. Unless Colorado wins half their remaining games, the past four months’ futility has cemented this season as the worst in Colorado Rapids history.
It makes sense. The team doesn’t work as constructed, seems out of ideas, and lacks both cohesion and motivation. I think Robin Fraser is a good coach and will have success elsewhere, but just like sometimes two good people aren’t good together in a marriage after a while, the Rapids and Robin weren’t a good match for each other anymore, either. It was time to call it quits.
Colorado are left in a very bad place. Rebuilding cannot begin for another three months. There is nothing left to play for this year for the players, except pride. The new interim coach, Chris Little, will have to come in and find some way of playing that might grind out a result or two - and regardless of what he does, he’s probably hitting the bricks in November no matter what. It seems Team President Pádraig Smith has gotten it very wrong for 2023. Many think he should be sacked, too.
Zoom out another level, and the failures of this team seem to be on the shoulders of Josh Kroenke and KSE. The mega-rich billionaire and his Walmart-heir dad, who own five other pro sports franchises, can’t be bothered to sign a few real Designated Players, or spend at the level of the new and shiny MLS 3.0 teams1, and so year after year, they have doomed this club to hoping to cobble together a wunder-team out of a mix of mid-level talents and homegrown kids who somehow overperform and overachieve expectation, year after year. The Rapids defied expectation, and math, when they topped the Western Conference in impressive fashion in 2021.2 But you always regress back to the mean, and 2021 was proved to be a blip, not a trend. At this stage of MLS history, you can’t win MLS Cup without investing in a world-class player or three, a sparkling supporting cast, and a strong academy that is ready to contribute. KSE hasn’t spent the money to get this team the DPs it needs. It is debatable whether the club has done the other two things well lately, either.
So some say fire Fraser; some say fire Pádraig; and still others will say ‘KSE Out’ is the only real solution.
In the end, we’re left with figure pointing and blame; meaningless matches; a lot of sadness; and not a lot of accountability.3 These words feel familiar. I wrote some version of them in 2014; and again in 2015, and 2017, and 2018, and 2022. This is a very frustrating team to love, because it rarely, if ever, feels like it loves you back.
There’s an ‘I’ In Rapids. It seems like there’s 11 of them.
But Eleven ‘I’s doesn’t spell ‘team.’
This loss was just like the other losses, but more so, in that it looked disjointed and disconnected, especially in buildup and attack. I was going to write about how poorly these players play together – how they are eleven guys, but not a team – before the news dropped of Robin Fraser getting fired. But in the greater context, breaking down this September 2 defeat to RSL in the rubber match of the Rocky Mountain Cup tells us a lot about how Robin Fraser failed overall, throughout the season, and especially at the end.
This team doesn’t play like a team. They play like eleven guys who only slightly know what they’re supposed to do in relation to everyone else around them. Not so much in defense, where they look fairly organized. But definitely in possession and attack.
For the first ten minutes of the match, I couldn’t even evaluate the manner in which the Rapids attempted to build the attack, because the players simply cleared the ball from their own end; or turned it over completely. To be generous, this is not that abnormal on the road in the early goings: you tactically absorb pressure and defend early, knowing that your opponent wants to get the early goal and dictate the terms of the match. But with the Rapids at this point of the year, it’s hard to tell the difference between tactics and desperation.
But at 11 minutes (!) we get something good.
Cole Bassett intercepts the ball and feeds it to Diego Rubio. Rubio makes a deft turn to get away from two RSL defenders and passes to Connor Ronan , who runs into a big pocket of space. RSL don’t close him down - a big mistake - and that gives Colorado a great opportunity. Ronan now has several options to choose from. Rubio is probably not an option, since the defender is jamming up that lane. Newly acquired striker Raphael Navarro makes a run to split the CBs, but Ronan doesn’t send it in. So he dips away from the two defenders and into another space. Meanwhile the right back has been pulled wide by Sidnei Tavares. Bassett’s off on the right by himself - he waves his arm, but I’m not sure why, since he’s probably the least threatening option considering his distance from goal and the number of defenders.
Navarro gets the pass and has a GREAT look. It turns out to be one of only two plays in the whole game in which the Rapids produce a shot on target (they have another series in the 70th that produces 2 on-target shots). Expected Goals put this at a 0.03, and xGOT (Expected Goals On Target, a measure of how often this goal goes in when you put it on frame) rated this shot a 0.51: meaning, statistically, this one goes in 51% of the time if the shooter places it on frame. Navarro is a little unlucky. A touch more mustard on it, or a whisker higher, and perhaps it is a goal. On the ensuing corner the Rapids go into Loki’s Toboggan,4 but it comes to nothing.
Tavares is ghosting back post for a rebound. Rubio and Bassett are … not really doing anything? I kind of forgive them because I think they think this ball is going in and there’s nothing for them to do. But I’m not sure they knew where to go on this play, and that causes me some concern. Still, this play was a Rapids bright spot on the night.
In the 19th minute, the Rapids concede a free-kick goal that Marko Ilić should have stopped but didn’t.
On the ensuing kickoff, the Rapids have a chance to display how they build an attack. Instead, they do this:
I mean, it’s a strategy, I guess. But it’s a low-percentage chance. So it’s not a good strategy.
Once you kick it long and central for a 50-50 aerial ball, you’ve mathematically reduced your chance of success because you’ve traded sure possession and limited risk in advancing the ball incrementally forward for a large leap towards the goal, but that has a high probability of turnover.
More over, why do this on an ensuing kick, when you’re down 1-0? If you have the lead and you want to force the opponent to possess and penetrate on your terms, sure, do that. But if you are the Rapids, and you’re losing on the road, and you have been struggling to both generate changes and score goals, why do this?
I suspect there are tactical problems with this team - that the coach hasn’t given them the right plan and ideas. But I also suspect the players are not on the same page about what they’re supposed to be doing. We’ll see more of this as the game progresses.
At 23’, after an Ilić pass that Ronan can’t handle, we get this series:
That’s Ronan, stealing it back, and then hitting a line-breaking pass to Tavares, who … steals it from Cole Bassett? Why are these two players in the same place to receive a ball? Why, after he receives it does Tavares not think to use the screen Bassett gave him and turn up field? Why doesn’t he play it to Ronen after that? Where is Ralph Priso going? Why? Why is Beitashour staying so far back? Why does Tavares play a hospital ball to Steven Beitashour, while Beita is basically backpedalling?
Everything about this play was awful, but most awful about it was that it looks like eleven kids running around on the field with no clear idea of their role or what they need to do to begin an attack. Andrew Gutman and Andreas Maxsø are back to defend; Rubio is the wide option in case the team wants to switch the point of attack; Navarro is getting dragging a defender around to open up space. The rest of the team are just … running around, man. A lot of it starts with Tavares’ choices, but he’s not the only problem.
From 23’ to 45’, the Rapids tried to go long from the keeper a few times, and also produced a decently worked small-side rondo5 that turned into a long shot from Diego Rubio which went just over the bar. That was actually a well-worked team possession, but it ended in a low-percentage shot. Compare that to the way good teams work their way into the box, and you see why I didn’t include it.
Here’s my last play that demonstrates these issues.
Wilson hits it long to Navarro, who heads backwards to Bassett. Bassett plays back to Ronan, who passes to Priso. Priso spins back *into Bassett*, who had a chance after his pass to do something, but didn’t. Now all three Rapids midfielders are clumped in the same spot while Navarro, Tavares, and Gutman are pressing forward, but on little islands of their own - none is in range of a pass. Navarro has a nice 1v1 and signals with his arms that he wants service while he goes on a break
but Priso missed that chance. The ball goes into Rubio, who inexplicable pounds it right to an RSL player. Possession wasted.
…
We don’t know if this team looks like such a hot mess in attack because Fraser didn’t coach them effectively or because the players selected aren’t comfortable with their roles. Or if the players aren’t capable of what they’ve been assigned to, or perhaps these players are simply not good enough for this level of soccer. As I’ve mentioned before, Bassett has regressed. Priso just doesn’t seem up for it. Ronan can’t combine effectively. Rubio seems misused. Tavares isn’t clicking. Gutman seems like a capable fellow, but often when he comes up in attack it feels like the pieces aren’t moving around him in support or to complement him. It’s eleven individuals - it’s certainly not looking like a team. The last manager couldn’t form these eleven guys into a team. So they’ll either find someone that can, or many of these eleven guys won’t be on this team in a few months.
Every DP LAFC has ever signed is better by a mile than every DP the Rapids have ever signed. LAFC has been around for six years. The Rapids have been around for 27 years.
[If there had been DPs before 2008, though, Pablo Mastroeni and Marcelo Balboa would have deserved to be DPs].
Colorado in 2021 produced 49.58 Expected Points, 11th-best in the league, but finished the season with 61 points (!) - second best in the league and 10.42 points better than expected. That level of over-production is not sustainable. And so in 2022 and 2023 it was … not sustained.
.
Did you see that video of Olympique Lyonnaise supporters dressing down the team at the end of a loss to PSG? By comparison, the Rapids have never to my knowledge had a tradition of staying on the field to thank the fans, even in good times. When the team lost the 2016 Western Conference final at home to Seattle, the fans hung around to applaud what was a great season. And the players just left – they walked into the locker room and that was it.
Feels like something is rotten in our culture. The players are athletes. The fans are consumers. The management are businessmen and women. Nothing more.
Two weeks ago I wrote: “Also, there’s only three different corner kick routines that I’ve seen them run over and over for the past three years. The team’s tactics are old and stale, but I keep seeing them.” And here we are, running Loki’s Toboggan again against a team we play 3x a year, every year. That link to the article on Loki’s Toboggan is two years old. The Rapids have been running it for possibly five years now. YOU KNOW RSL watched tape of this. YOU KNOW RSL practiced defending it at training. SO WHY ARE WE STILL RUNNING THIS PLAY EVERY GAME, 3-5 times a game?
Listen, I love Loki’s Toboggan. But it needs to go back into the garage for a few months or more, because it’s so unbelievably predictable.
Rondo or 5v2 is a drill soccer teams do that tests agility and develops reactions. Five players in a circle maybe 10 yards in diameter, and two players in the middle trying to break up passes.
Yup