Backpass: Sixty Seven Cole Bassetts
The Rapids wrote about a new philosophy of soccer, 'The Rapids Way', more than three years ago. It was a rouse. The real 'Rapids Way' is much more clever.

You learn a few things when you move to Colorado. First that, contrary to what you might have assumed, they do not automatically issue you a Subaru Outback when you arrive at DIA: you actually have to buy one. Second, there are no lines at Home Depot if you go during a Broncos game. And third, that Denver gets an average of 245 days of sunshine a year.
That last one is notable because it has an impact on the Colorado Rapids that is becoming more and more important as MLS moves forward.
States with weather amenable to year-round outdoor sports produce more athletes. The top five states in the US for producing active professional athletes, according to data compiled by Business Insider, are California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Georgia. In soccer, the top five states for producing D-I college players are California, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia - that data was originally gathered over at TopDrawerSoccer.
States with good weather and sizable populations produce athletes because kids want to run around more when it isn’t freezing or raining - duh.
What’s that got to do with the Rapids? We’re getting there.
For years now the diehard fans in Commerce City have complained bitterly about the lack of investment in the club. Stan and Josh Kroenke have clearly committed to operating the team on a shoestring budget: that’s something that I’ve talked about on the podcast and in my writing for years, although the definitive piece of analysis on that fact comes from a May 2019 piece by Sam Stejskal in The Athletic in which he stated bluntly ‘(Anthony Hudson said) the Rapids “are fighting at the bottom with a bottom group of players.” … As long as Stan Kroenke owns the team, it’s hard to imagine it getting much better.’*
So as much as fans scream bloody murder about it, the fact remains that there is no foreseeable future in which the Colorado Rapids spend money to win on the order that the LA Galaxy, Seattle Sounders, or Atlanta United are willing to do. We must accept the reality that as long as KSE owns the Rapids, this will be a frugal team.
Which could condemn the Rapids to be permanently terrible. Chivas USA were always a low-spending team, and that effectively meant that, with the exception of one good season**, they were generally a bad soccer team; year-in, year-out.
But being low-budget doesn’t necessarily mean being bad. The 1992 movie ‘El Mariachi’ is a great film, famously made for $7,000 that Robert Rodriguez put on his credit card. In sports, the way to ‘El Mariachi’ your way to fame is to play Moneyball; find ways of making the most of limited advantages; use data to maximize opportunity; lean into your frugality. And in soccer, the cheapest way to get players onto the roster is to develop a strong local academy and sign your youth players.
It seems more and more that this is truly the Rapids Way.
Your youth system is a bargain. Consider that it’ll cost your team tens of thousands of dollars to send a scout to Argentina - to fly him or her there, put them up at hotels, rent cars, and let them bop around the Pampas for a few weeks looking for the next Messi in the youth academy of Boca Juniors or Rosario Central. Then, because every other team on the planet has scouts in Argentina, you’re going to pay a sizable transfer fee - most of the time, upwards of a million dollars for even a ‘raw talent, unfinished product, lots of potential’ kind of kid. By comparison, if an academy player costs between $15,000 to 20,000 a year to develop and train, that same million dollars spent in Buenos Aires on the next Messi gives you between 50 and 67 potential Cole Bassetts.***
Once you’ve developed them on the cheap, you sign them for cheap, too. The first contracts for Sam Vines, Cole Bassett, and Kortne Ford all had them locked up for 3 years or more at around $80K a year. And because of MLS homegrown rules, none of that money counted against the cap. To Stan Kroenke it was a bargain; to Pádraig Smith, those players were absolutely free.
Colorado is fertile ground for youth sports because it has a healthy, outdoor culture and pretty good weather. It isn’t handegg-crazy like Texas, so your best athletes don’t automatically become linebackers. All of that feeds your youth pipeline.
Now’s a good time to suggest that if you want this kind of insight in your email the minute it gets published, it’d be good to click ‘subscribe’ and join the hundreds of MLS and Colorado Rapids supporters who want to think a little more deeply about their league and their club.
Pádraig Smith, the Rapids GM, is not dumb. He knows all of this. That’s why the four youngest signings in Rapids history have all come in the past two years.****
To say the Rapids have had luck with their academy signings would be to discount the hard work of the individuals that helped produce these players. Director of Soccer Operations Brian Crookham has had the vision and the organization, and Eric Bushey, Marcelo Balboa, Chris Cartlidge (and more) have done a brilliant job with coaching, and together the system has produced diamonds from the rough for the past few years at an impressive rate. Whereas the Rapids have produced six homegrowns over the last four years (Ford, Bassett, Vines, Matt Hundley, Anderson, Will Vint) - and four with MLS minutes, the Portland Timbers have produced just three homegrowns in that time - and only one that played at the MLS level. Minnesota has produced zero, and recently disbanded their academy altogether.
All this scribbling is in anticipation of the Rapids’ next homegrown signing. Colorado has clearly been laying the groundwork for a big upcoming announcement about Darren Yapi.
As I tweeted the other day, Yapi is 16 years, 38 days old.*****
If Colorado does sign him soon, he would become the youngest Rapids homegrown ever. The current reigning ‘youngest Rapids signing ever’ is Sebastian Anderson at 16 years, 238 days. Yapi is listed as a midfielder, but he’s fast and he scores buckets of goals. The only position I’d rule out for him long-term is center back.
Because I moved out of Colorado two years ago, I haven’t actually watched Yapi play or spoken to him at training, so I can’t tell you much specifically. But even if he doesn’t pan out, Yapi is a symbol of the new style the Rapids have been embarking on of late - the ‘real’ Rapids Way: develop the kids, sign the kids, play the kids.
This team isn’t likely to ever be in the top five of MLS clubs in terms of spending. They may never have three Designated Players on the roster simultaneously, because dropping $8 to 15 million on the salary of just three guys would absolutely blow up the bottom line.
But they can put a truckload of wiggly elementary schoolers on the pitch and let them run around in the Colorado sunshine. And then, with patience and scouting and coaching, that huge crop might produce a few Shane O’Neills and Cole Bassetts and Kortne Fords and Dillon Sernas - perhaps even enough to win another MLS Cup before too long.
*: My favorite note of stinginess from that article was the point that the Rapids were the only team in MLS with zero PR staff and one person employed as Communications staff. When I visited LAFC in 2018, they had 15 employees spread between those two departments. This is David Justice complaining about paying for soda in the clubhouse in ‘Moneyball’. This is a thing that Rapids beat reporters had complained about for years, quietly. By the way - it got worse. In August, Luis Aguilar quit, and for three months all media requests for the Rapids went to the digital/video department. That led to a lot of unanswered emails and interviews we never got.
**: In 2007, Chivas USA won the Western Conference. That team had a 23-year-old Brad Guzan, a 22-year-old Jonathan Bornstein, and 22-year-old Sacha Kljestan, along with Jesse Marsch, Paulo Nagamura, Maykel Galindo, and Ante Razov. This was Chivas’ ‘a broken watch is right twice a day’ moment in MLS.
***: Consider coaches, field maintenance, travel, equipment, etc.
****: There’s another reason - the Academy has been exceptionally productive of late. That hasn’t always been the case. Some years are better than others. Over the years that I interviewed Rapids Director of Soccer Development Brian Crookham, he’s been pretty honest about certain years, like birth year 1998, being a little weak. Things always ebb and flow a little.
*****: The youngest MLS homegrown signing ever is Freddie Adu: he was 14 years, 168 days old. Adu is 31 years old and has played for 15 different clubs. On four continents.