Backpass: Nobody Expects the Colorado Rapids!
Surprise! They won the Western Conference. How?
At the end of decision day, there were at least two MLS surprises. The first was the rebound of New York Red Bulls, who recovered from being below the playoff line in mid-September to a fantastic run of form in October and November, giving them a 5-1-1 record down the stretch and the coveted seventh and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
The Red Bulls made sure to remind everybody that #NobodyBelievedInUs by posting the preseason MLS punditry as “receipts”.
Which would be a flex, except that a) they finished in 7th, which is not really that impressive, and more importantly b) they only squeaked into that last playoff spot because Montreal no-heighted their match against Orlando. A Montreal win could have knocked NYRB out completely.
The second surprise, of course, was our blessed Rapids unexpectedly winning the Western Conference, with came with a first round playoff bye, a spot in the 2022 Concacaf Champions League, this nifty tote bag and a set of ginsu knives.1
Nobody expected that at season’s start. Not me:
Not Matt:
And not anyone at MLSsoccer.com :
But to be fair, nobody in their right mind could have expected the Rapids to finish in first.2 They finished 5th in 2020, got obliterated in the first round of the playoffs, and spent the offseason making almost no changes to speak of. Another slightly-better-or-slightly-worse-than-midtable finish seemed logical. And yet, they topped the conference.
There were many, many factors that contributed to this unexpected and delightful surprise.
The Collapse of LAFC
In 2019, LAFC finished with an outrageous 21-9-4 (WTL) record - winning the Western Conference and setting a record for points in a season with 72 (a record New England broke this past week.) In the herky-jerky, MLS tournament in a bubble 2020 season, despite losing their goalkeeper and some defenders, and with Carlos Vela staying home for half a season due to Covid fears, they finished 5th in the West. But coming into 2021, they still had Vela, and Diego Rossi, and Eduard Atuesta and Latif Blessing, as well as head coach / soccer savant Bob Bradley, plus the young and promising Jose Cifuéntes, goalscorer Cristian Arango, and Brian Rodriguez. Everything looked good for a return to the top. And indeed, seven of the eleven MLSsoccer.com pundits picked them to return to first in the west.3
Welp, Vela only played 1,267 minutes. The 21-year-old Rodriguez is in his third season of being described as ‘promising’ instead of ‘prolific’. The goalkeeper situation in LA is abysmal. They conceded 51 goals - which is 6th overall in the WC but 15 more than Colorado and 18 more than Seattle. They sold off Mark-Anthony Kaye and Diego Rossi. LAFC stumbled to a 12-9-13 record. With the 5-2 pasting they received from the Rapids on decision day, they finished 9th - out of the playoffs for the first time in their short history.
So that took one expected-juggernaut completely out of the mix.
Injuries at Seattle
The Sounders began 2021 looking like a team to beat, once again. Since they rose to prominence in the mid-teens of this century, they seemed to consistently get things right. Things started poorly for the Rave Green when the club’s fleet-footed wing forward and homegrown local-boy-makes-good Jordan Morris tore his ACL on loan to English Championship side Swansea in February. He just returned to action last week. Striker Nico Lodeiro was out most of the season with knee problems too; he just had a second arthroscopic procedure in September and is out indefinitely. And goalkeeper Stefan Frei only played about half the season due to injury.
None of that was enough to keep Seattle from qualifying for the playoffs for the 13th year in a row - Fish Chucker FC has never missed the playoffs, and never had a losing season, in its entire MLS history.
But it was enough to keep them from being indestructible. Will Bruin is a solid-but-unspectacular striker. I have questions about a fullback corp that includes Jimmy Medranda, Nouhou Tolo, Brad Smith, and Alex Roldan. And a stretch-run-acquisition of Rapids castoff Nicolas Benezet?
They’re a great team, but they were pipped at the line for 1st in the conference by the Rapids because they could only manage a 1-1 draw against a feisty Vancouver Whitecaps side. So really, how good are they, actually?
Stats will lose to the human spirit every day
The Colorado Rapids Goals Added (G+) Differential - the number of goals all of their soccering actions were expected to produce minus all the goals their soccer actions were expected to concede - was an unremarkable +1.08, good enough for 13th in MLS. (LAFC’s +18.41 was 1st. Wild.)
To offset that mediocre stat, they outperformed their Expected Goals Differential (xGD), the balance of goals a computer model would expect them to score minus the number the model expected them to concede, by a huge margin. The Rapids GD this year was +16 (they scored 50 while conceding just 34). The xGD was just 3.71, meaning they outperformed expectation by +12.29 GD-xGD. Only Vancouver (+12.68) and Portland (+13.30) did better.
In non-math talk, they were simply better at forcing the opponents into bad shots, better at saving shots, and better at putting away their own shots than other teams. They were great in the final third on both ends.4
That could be personnel. William Yarbrough’s contribution to the club has been massive, and something I did not at all expect. The back three of Austin Trusty, Danny Wilson, and Lalas Abubakar are exceptional, and are made better by the defensive work that Jack Price has been doing all season, and the support of Keegan Rosenberry on the right flank. There are multiple dangerous threats in the final third for this team - Diego Rubio, Braian Galvan, Michael Barrios, Cole Bassett, Jonathan Lewis, and Andre Shinyashiki - that have amounted to a Voltron-esque striker-by-committee hydra beast.
It might be set pieces. Jack Price’s delivery is as sweet as it gets. Danny Wilson and Lalas Abubakar and Dominique Badji are tasty targets. Those kinds of things help to produce results that outperform expectation.
It might be Robin Fraser. His offense - move the defenders around and around with passes until there’s a seam, and then exploit it - might be the key to over-performing in the final third. The computer models of what goals should and should not go is based on where a shot on the field occurs, but not where the defender might have been when the shot was taken. Get a defender a step behind, suddenly that 18 yard short from the right has a higher probability of going it because your shooter has a clearer look at the goal and a quarter-second more time to shape-up.
I believe in stats, even when on the face of things the Rapids looked like they have defied mathematical probability. Or in the words of Pablo Mastroeni, maybe stats truly do lose to the human spirit every day.
This doesn’t happened very often
The 2019 MLS Conference winners were NYCFC and LAFC. Their leading scorers, Héber and Carlos Vela, had 15 and 34 goals, respectively. The 2018 Conference winners were NYRB and Sporting KC. Their leading scorers, were Bradley Wright-Phillips and Daniel Salloí with 20 and 11 goals, respectively.
In the past 10 years, only four teams out of 20 have won their conference without any double-digit goal-scorers on their team:
2011 Sporting Kansas City; 9 goals from Kei Kamara and Omar Bravo
2015 FC Dallas; 9 goals from Fabian Castillo
2016 FC Dallas; 9 goals from Michael Barrios and Maxi Urruti.
and! 2021 Colorado; 8 goals from Michael Barrios
Getting to the top of your conference without an elite goalscorer is not unheard of, but it ain’t common, neither.
The Rapids have lots of inexpensive, good-not-great guys up top, and they didn’t have a double digit goal scorer, and yet, against the odds, they won the Western Conference.
The uncomfortable thing about the two FC Dallas and the Sporting KC teams: none of them won MLS Cup. One might offer a piece of conventional wisdom here and say ‘when the playoffs start, it’s when you rely on your stars to carry you,’ and since these teams didn’t have the big time golden boot guy, they couldn’t survive.
So I combed through all the MLS Cup winners and … they all pretty much had a signature striker/goalscorer. 2009 RSL? Robbie Findley. 2005 LA Galaxy? Landon Donovan. The one exception I found was 2013 Sporting Kansas City - who we talked about last month because they also won MLS Cup without a DP.
So starting the season, and looking at the Rapids strikers, I think all of us could be forgiven for thinking ‘these guys might surprise some folks, but they don’t have the firepower to win the conference.’ And of course, once again, we were wrong.
Why? Nobody expects the Colorado Rapids!
Reports regarding the free knives and tote bag unconfirmed at time of writing.
The other 4 MLS commentators picked them 2nd.
In reality, stats *don’t* lose to the human spirit everyday. You just need to look at the stats the right way. The Rapids get into good spots, but not any more or less than other MLS teams. In those spots, though, they do better than expected, and that makes all the difference.