Backpass: No Vibes
We're adrift and struggling. There are many possible reasons. I say: it's because we lack a vibes guy.
Colorado’s toothless, lackluster match against Portland on Saturday felt to me like a ‘ok, I’m ready to panic’ moment.
And this is always an interesting thing for me, as a guy who is in season nine of covering our dear Rapids as a writer. Because it’s very easy to panic too early, or too late. Any hack writer can tell you when you’re ten points below the playoff line in August “Hey guys, I think this team might be in trouble.” And any hack writer can freak out in May about two losses in a row. You actually have to, you know, watch the games in order to really have a feel for when to actually freak out.
And, yea verily, that moment hath arrived.
Other than a few chances in the 49th minute, and a pair of shots right in from of goal in the 80th, Colorado looked clunky and static in ways that they have often looked for the past eight weeks. Without Jack Price in the lineup, and without Lucas Esteves creating mayhem on the left side, the team was most likely to create by bypassing the midfield and either lobbing it long or going down the wings, or both. Diego Rubio, playing as a midfielder, was mostly negligible until the 80th, when he placed a through ball right in the perfect spot for Jonathan Lewis, who took two extra touches and put it right in the keepers hands.
But we said some of these things on the podcast already - you don’t pull up Backpass to hear me regurgitate the same pablum from three days ago.
So the simple problem we have right now is - we don’t have a vibes guy. What do I mean by vibes guy? A few classic examples. (Apologies is you are a new Rapids/MLS fan and some of these names whizz right over your head. Google exists, though. And Youtube.)
Vicente Sanchez is the paradigmatic vibes guy. He had SWAGGER. He was FILTHY when he wanted to be. Yeah, ok, he could go a few games as invisible as a Pac Man ghost after you munch the big dot. But he could also do this (sound up):
PURE FUCKING VIBES, DUDE.
Tim Howard was a massive outlay of cash, and mostly not worth it. But in the 2016 Playoffs against LA Galaxy, in PKs at home, he stuffed BOTH Giovani Dos Santos AND Jeff Larentowicz to send the Rapids to the Western Conference Final.
He absolutely had both dead to rights on which way they would dive, and he eliminated the mighty Galaxy. Cometh the man, cometh the hour. VIBES GUY.
Jack Price is in the 94th percentile of all MLS players in assists over the past year (stretching back to the 2021 season) with 0.26 A per 90 minutes. Last year he was fourth in all of MLS in Assists Per 90, and second in assists overall with 12. And 7 of those assists came on corners. Not surprisingly, a British soccer data analytics company named him as the best crosser in MLS last year.
And because he’s deadly accurate on dead balls, FIFA22 gave him a special issue card that clocks the Shropshire Pirlo at an overall of 90. Which is bonkers good, if you play FIFA. Like, Beckham / Alan Shearer / Iniesta levels of good.
VIBES GUY? VIBES GUY.
With Jack out due to an injured calf, Colorado has to piece together a central midfield composed of Mark-Anthony Kaye and … well … whatever else we’ve got lying around. Collen Warner is good at positioning, an average tackler, not really an offensive threat, and slow as a cement mixer.1 Max has played himself right out of the lineup. Phillip Mayaka, who I had hoped early in the season could be our Dom Badji / Andre Shinyashiki MLS Draft wunderkind, is struggling mightily with Rapids 2 - or more aptly, Rapids 2 are struggling mightily, and clearly having Mayaka hasn’t made matters any better.
But a ‘Vibes Guy’ doesn’t have to come out of the middle. Forwards are often big vibes guys - Ricardo Pepi and Carlos Vela and Landon Donovan2 for example. Defenders can even be vibes guys. Orlando fullback Ruan is a huge vibes guy - partially because he’s just insanely fast. Marcelo with Real Madrid?3 Pure vibes. Hard core defenders that pump their teams up, like Walker Zimmerman or Alexander Callens are vibes guys. Drew Moor, in his younger days, was absolutely a vibes guy.
You might respond ‘but you’re just listing great players!’
No.
I am listing great players that also project confidence onto everyone around them. The guy that walks into the room and says ‘I got this’. And also - a guy that’s fun and energetic - that you want to go into battle for. Christian Pulisic is the USMNT’s best player. He’s… not a vibes guy. He doesn’t seem to capture the energy of the moment. I mean, he had that extra time goal in the Concacaf Nations League Final to beat Mexico 3-2. It was a great PK goal, top shelf upper 90, and a great celebration. I think it gives him a nomination to the ‘vibes guy’ selection committee. But the resume, it needs to be filled out some more.
Your vibes guy doesn’t have to be a DP, or have a hall of fame career. A guy can be a two-season vibes guy. Lee Nguyen. Brek Shea. Some spice to get things going. Or the glue that puts it all together. Conor Casey in 2010, for example. Jeff Larentowicz4 with Atlanta. There are many permutations of vibes guys, and they can be acquired in a lot of different ways. And sometimes, especially when one vibes guy (Jack Price) is hurt, a team needs another vibes guys to keep it going. Landon Donovan had Robbie Keane. Taty Castellanos has Maxi Moralez. If one was off, shit still poppin’.
Colorado is 12th place in the Western Conference – four points from dead-last, but also four points from the last playoff slot (that’s seventh).5 They don’t need radical chemotherapy or a full blown overhall. Many of the guys that got them to first place last year are still here, and still capable of playing exactly as well as they did in 2021. But they’re missing a piece.6 A vibes guy. And they need that to thrive through the rest of 2022.
Hyperbolic, to be sure. He’s probably below average for MLS, but not for, say USL League One, and he could probably dust me in a foot race. Never think that a slight from a writer is an indication that the writer is any kind of athlete. But also remember that I assume that, just as I can’t played midfield for the Rapids even a little bit, Collen Warner could not lead Shabbat morning services at my synagogue. It works both ways.
Donovan is an interesting case study in ‘vibes guy’ theory. When he talks, he sounds like an accountant telling you that the pension fund should be re-invested in more diverse foreign money market accounts in order to ««««snore»»». But the dude took time off tot travel in Southeast Asia because he was burnt out. He stepped up, time and time again, in pressure situations to carry his team. He played abroad when that was still uncommon for Americans -and when everyone doubted him. I say vibes guy.
Dudes with a single name? OFTEN VIBES GUYS. Maybe Max Alves needs to be called Max Alves until he earns the right to go by ‘Max’ alone. I think I just decided that for myself.
Two mentions of Big Red, The Ginger Ninja, in one Backpass!
They are also 17 points from first place. Yikes.
Depending on how long William Yarbrough and Clint Irwin are down, they also may need a goalkeeper. Abraham Rodriguez might be able to do it. But he might not. They definitely need a backup at the very least.