Backpass: Live Blogging The Unofficial End

There's nothing left to play for in 2023 for Colorado. Let's journey through the final relevant minutes of the season in real time. With banana pudding.

Cole Bassett misses against Portland. Image c/o John Babiak, @photog_johnb

Knowing that a Rapids loss to Toluca means the effective end of our season, with no real trophies to play for, I decided to live-blog it. For me this is the equivalent as kind of like bringing your therapist to a match.

Monday, 5:53pm - I sit down to watch a few more minutes of the Nashville-Toluca match from last Thursday that I began watching in hopes of podcasting my thoughts with Matt. Unfortunately, last Thursday was Tisha BeAv, a Jewish fast day in which we do not eat or drink from sundown to an hour past sundown. Normally I’m ok at fasting. Somehow, Thursday, I was dreadfully sick by the end and couldn’t be on the podcast (I couldn’t even sit up). So Monday night I popped on the rest of the match.

Toluca were incredibly deliberate in transition, and deadly in the final third. They schwacked Nashville 4-3 with precision, speed, and youthful exuberance – all things the Rapids do not have. I turn off the tv and am resigned to the Rapids losing, at best, by two goals. That would be fine with me. The benchmark has been set: please, no humiliation.

8:26 pm - I pour the rest of a nice bottle of sake I brought back from New Jersey (Pittsburgh sake selection, due to the dull monopoly of state-run stores, is woeful). I make some salmon, creme fraiche, and pumpernickel toast paired with a lovely brie from the San Francisco Bay Area and, rather than watch Americá vs Columbus in Leagues Cup, I turn on a cooking show.¹

I have lost my appetite for watching really good soccer too close to a Rapids match. It gives me a case of the sads, since we, alas, do not play really good soccer.

9:05 pm - I am nervous and I need to eat my feelings. I make some vanilla pudding with bananas.

9:30 pm - Lightning delay. I check Chris Bianchi’s twitter feed and see that it’s pouring in Boulder and Castle Rock, and quarter-inch hail is blanketing Golden. I expect to be picking up this live blog Tuesday night. However, I have a comfy couch and a nice blanket and am prepared to stay up till whenever.

11:35 pm - In the time I waited, I was able to binge my way to the end of the cooking show and learned that pumpkin steaks are a thing, that mackerel has tiny little annoying-ass bones that need to be tweezered out, and that ‘running the pass’ in a professional kitchen in real life is basically just as fucking terrifying as it is on ‘The Bear’. Teams are now warming up. There’s a better-than-even chance I will fall asleep once or twice during this match.

Dammit that ‘How will I know?’ RBC Wealth Management commercial is on. Again.

11:48 pm / 9’ : Each team has two rough fouls already. Offense has been limited to attempts at long balls and two Toluca forays into the box. So far, Rapids seem at least feisty, if outmatched. Toluca haven’t shown any flash yet, but I know they have it in them if Colorado are caught napping.

11:54 pm / 15’ : Cole Bassett! He fires a shot from an audacious angle, parried by Toluca GK Volpi. Some life in the boys yet.

11:56 pm 17’: There’s a Mexican flag draped over the Rapids tifo in section 117, the supporters section. Sincerely, wtf man. In most countries, that guy would catch a beat down. In Serbia they’d be using that guy’s head as the game ball and no one would convict the supporters of anything.

12 midnight / 19’: Andrew Gutman and Cole Bassett are being given a little room. Everyone else - the center and right sides - are being tightly marked. The game is very physical, and both teams are just daring the ref to start issuing cards.

12:02 / 21’ : The ref issues a card to Danny Wilson.

24’ - Toluca gets going back in transition incredibly fast and gets a shot, then a corner.

Their transition scares me with how fast it gets going in the other direction.

27’ - If Toluca fouling were a drinking game, I’d pre-order a cot in the Emergency room for a second half visit for alcohol poisoning. We’ll see if they start to see cards.

34’ - The commentators are talking about how great Robin Fraser was as a defender in his day. This talking point - Fraser’s playing days - is possibly an Apple contractual obligation for commentators around the 20 to 30 minute mark, every game. They will also say something nice at some point about Connor Ronen.

Every one else on the Rapids is a complete mystery to the MLS commentator pool. Like Keegan Rosenberry is just waiting to be discovered, in his 8th season in the league and after over 200 games.

37’ - Toluca gets a goal on … a quick transition. Flag is up though. Still 0-0.

The sound of the crowd in the stadium is very unfamiliar. Lot of Toluca chants, chorus of boos for I think Galván. I’m not liking it.

41’ - Toluca starts passing it around the back. The fans cheer ‘Olé!’ Which makes no sense because it’s early and none of the passes is like impressive or anything. But hey, we can’t expect Mexico to understand soccer. It’s not like their national sport or anything.

42’ - Yarbrough makes a tough save on a very sharp Toluca shot.

45’ - Pedro Raul spins a three-quarter bicycle kick over his head and puts it in the back post.

The Rapids now need a 3-1 win to make the next round, so they can either open up and play a very risky aggressive style, or just stick to the plan and hope something miraculous happens. So far I remember two shots - the Bassett one from a sharp left angle and a long shot from Galván that wasn’t worthy of a mention.

Halftime - I’m gonna have more pudding.

I’m trying to contemplate how I’m feeling right now. I’m not really sad so much as resigned to disappointment once again. For a split second, I thought to myself ‘perhaps I have made a bad choice, investing so much time and energy in this team over the past years.’ I brush this thought away as fast as possible, not because it is incorrect, but because I know that in January, the Rapids will make a few signings, and I will see the new schedule, and the Superdraft, and a new kit drop, and will convince myself that perhaps, just maybe, this year will be different.

55’ - Diego Rubio, Ralph Priso, and Michael Barrios come on. Well, better than nothing.

71’ Sam Nicholson and Kevin (Not Remy) Cabral come on. We’re out of subs with 19 minutes to go. Ok, what the hell.

I’m not really hungry, but I start thinking about a hot dog anyway.

74’ - Cabral puts a pass a little behind Rubio and he can’t get it under control. It’s a game of inches - or really, centimeters - and Cabral is consistently a foot off in either direction. We have him under contract till 2025. Fudge.

77’ - Not great corner kick marking, and Toluca’s Edgar Lopez heads it in.

On the field Toluca have a Lopez, a Ruiz, a Garcia and a Morales, which feels like a FIFA manager mode standard name generator for Mexican names. Spanish for Smith, Jones, Taylor, and Miller.

Like we’re one’s to talk. The Rapids are starting a Calvin, a Connor, a Cole, and a Keegan. “I’ll take popular late 90s suburban white baby names for 600, Alex.”²

81’ - There’s a bunch more fouls. When’s Messi play again? I guess I’m that guy now.

What guy am I for the rest of the season? I will keep watching soccer, but I will be distracted between Arsenal’s start of the season, and the Pittsburgh Riverhounds, and seeing Weston McKennie and Christian Pulisic in Serie A. I only want to see the Rapids play if there’s something interesting about it, like the new guy Rafael Navarro (pronounced with a bunch of h’s somewhere') or a youth call-up. I will also watch all the games so that I have something intelligent to say on the podcast with Matt Pollard.

88’ - Well, that was bizarre. Kevin Cabral had a one-v-one breakaway, and elected to… back heel it to Barrios? But instead he turned it over. But the Toluca defender hacked him down afterwards. So it’s a PK to Diego Rubio, and he scores.

That one was for the bookies to mess with the over/under or the ‘win by two goals’ crowd. Never bet your rent on sports, kids. There’s no logic or reason. The Rapids can be 90% crap and still only lose 2-1 because the universe is cruel and chaotic.

That Kevin Cabral deal is looking worse and worse every day. ‘We’re only paying half his salary.’ If you went to a top art gallery filled with Miros and Koenigs and Basquiats and walked out with something the gallery owner’s niece drew in Kindergarten for $825K, and then when people asked about the crap artwork over your mantle, and your reply was ‘it was half off!’, people would think you were a moron. This is Kevin Cabral.

93’ - Toluca score on dumb turnover as Bombito and Priso turn it over in a bad spot. Never mind what I said about betting. Bet your rent, kids. Totally a healthy and rational thing to do. 3-1 Toluca.

95’ - Fucking hell, man. Bombito trucks his dude in the box and Toluca earns a PK. Mercifully, they don’t bring up their goalkeeper, Volpi, to take it; he scored a PK the other night against Nashville. Instead its Valber Huerta putting it hard low and right. 4-1. We lose by three goals. It’s officially humiliation.

1:39 am / 90+6 - It’s over. Congratulations, Rapids fans. There’s nothing left to play for this season other than avoiding the wooden spoon. If you’re headed out to Dick’s for the rest of the season, I sure hope you got your tickets for half-price or less.

1. ‘Five Star Chef’ on Netflix, which is fine. I prefer a cooking show where folks aren’t too mean and I can pick up a few techniques and ideas myself. This show, not so much, but at least now I’m intrigued by Yorkshire Pudding.

2. To be fair, Calvin Harris was born in England and grew up in Hong Kong and New Zealand. Not a slick suburban name where he’s from.