Backpass: The Lesson of the Loons
How did Minnesota United go from dead Loons to *Dethloon* in just four years? Also, we dig in on who the Rapids might leave unprotected in next weeks Expansion Draft.
Do you remember 2017? Pablo Mastroeni returned triumphant from a successful 2016 season sporting a new contract (but not a mustache). Minnesota United, meanwhile, was embarking on its first year in MLS after jumping from the free-falling NASL. And it wasn’t going well.
After building what they thought was a solid prototype to start the season, the Loons conceded 18 goals in their first four MLS matches - on pace to end 2017 with 153 Goals Allowed, or roughly twice the number of the worst team in league history, 2019 FC Cincinnatti (75 Goals Allowed). They got things under control but missed the playoffs by ten points. It seemed like 2017 could be chalked up as ‘a moral victory’ - the stadium was full every week, and the team eventually won a few games. But there was no clear sense that Minnesota was building a contender.
Flash forward four years, and United have built something real and impressive - a playoff team that was ten minutes away from playing for MLS Cup. It is worth taking a look at some of the moves Minnesota has made over the last four years that got them to this point - what principles might a team like the Colorado Rapids derive from Minnesota’s construction project that could be duplicated successfully in Commerce City? Have the Rapids got the right pieces together in building a playoff contender like Minnesota?*
Some guys are core guys, some guys are building blocks
The Loons in 2017 and 2018 tried a lot of guys out who would serve the club, but were not going to be the ultimate solution. But the process of plugging and playing in those first two years started to give the team their base moving forward.
Six key players stood out in 2017: Sam Nicholson, Miguel Ibarra, Christian Ramirez, Kevin Molino, Ethan Finlay, and Francisco Calvo. An additional player, Michael Boxall, would show promise and growth. That base of young talent allowed MNUFC to spend the next two years focusing on their big deficiencies - they needed big improvement at fullback, in central defense, they needed an upgraded goalkeeper, and a Designated Player. Nicholson was used in 2018 to trade for a better fullback, while Calvo and Ibsen would serve as a bridge to later upgrades of veteran MLS free agents - Ozzie Alonso and Ike Opara.
Molino, Finlay, and Boxall are all OG United players that started in the Western Conference Championship match last night. In Finlay and Molino’s cases, they endured torn ACLs in 2018 and 2019, but the club stuck by them, and they came back to be critical members of the team in 2020. Sticking with your guys isn’t just a mark of character - it has positive results, if you find the right guys.
Spend your money on DPs and transfer fees, even if they won’t all work out
United’s first DP, Darwin Quintero was a spectacular success for a very short while. While ultimately his play was a little bit one dimensional - he needed the ball at his feet to be dangerous, and he wasn’t the most adept passer - adding him to the team told Minnesota what they needed to look for in their next DPs. United went and got a DP defensive midfielder in Jan Gregus and a playmaking number 10 in Emanuel Reynoso, and added a young stud in Thomas Chacon who has yet to make an impact. That’s ok, because Gregus and Reynoso have been more than worth the money.
While Minnesota was willing to shell out estimated transfer fees of $2 million for Gregus, $4 million for Chacon and $5 million for Reynoso, the Rapids have yet to ever hold 3 DPs at once or be willing to spend seven figures on a transfer fee**. If we’ve learned something from the Loons, it’s that playoff success requires a full complement of players that you’ll need to spend big on.
The Bargain Finds are Not in Europe or Argentina - they’re in the NCAAs
Three of the key pieces to Minnesota’s team this year were all readily available to any and all MLS teams that wanted them in 2019, if only their talent identification teams had seen it. Minnesota took Dane St. Clair, Chase Gaspar, and Hassani Dotson in the 2019 Superdraft with the 7th, 15th, and 31st picks. In cash terms, you could probably have had those spots for a total of $325,000 in Garber Bucks.*** Gaspar was paid the rookie minimum $56,000 in 2019 and has started at left-back for the Loons for most of the past two years. St Clair was an excellent shot-stopper for Minnesota this year, and one they never intended to use until starting GK Tyler Miller went down with an injury. Dotson has been a reliable Swiss Army knife d-mid/winger/fullback for Adrian Heath.
There are a lot of guys in the NCAAs that don’t make the grade, too. But if you’re willing to throw enough scouts at the project and eat enough tape, you can probably find an excellent player in the Big 10, Pac 12, or ACC a lot easier and cheaper than you can by signing a kid from the Boca Juniors U-19 team.
Building a winner is really, really hard. I don’t mean to make light or make it seem like ‘Well if I were the Rapids GM I’d have won three cups by now!’ But I do think the Rapids could be introspective about their process in some thoughtful ways - to look at some of the things Minnesota did over a four year period, and some of the methods they chose and the positions or qualities they valued, and use it to build a better mousetrap as they go in search of a trophy next season.
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Before we turn to the important business of discussing who the Rapids might leave unprotected in next week’s expansion draft - have YOU subscribed to the Holding the High Line newsletter? Don’t you WANT the best Rapids analysis and punditry, delivered fresh into your email box, no muss, no fuss?
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The Rapids Protected List
I know it’s hard to believe, but there is yet another expansion draft again this year. MLS will hold the 2020 Expansion draft next Tuesday, December 15. Yes, you are not crazy: there was also an expansion draft in 2019, 2018, and 2017. These things break out like a case of mono after Freshman Year Orientation at Colorado College.**** Last year’s gave Nashville and Miami a chance to pick the detritus from the back end of MLS rosters, while 2018 and 2017 served up fringe talent to FC Cincinnati and LAFC.
The teams that had a player selected in 2019 are ineligible for pilfering this season, so unfortunately, the Rapids are one of 16 teams that Anthony Precourt’s new team can select players from. So in addition to expiring contracts, which we discussed last week, the Rapids might lose some other players, if Austin thinks they can be useful. Other than automatically protected players, the Rapids can protect twelve guys.
Rather than tell you ‘here’s who I’d pick’, I thought I’d lay things out in tiers: ‘Automatically protected’, Very Likely Safe’, ‘Grey Area’, and ‘Take ‘em if you want, Wooderson’.
Automatically Protected
Sebastian Anderson
Cole Bassett
Matt Hundley
Sam Vines
Will Vint
Kortne Ford
Abraham Rodriguez
Rapids homegrowns are automatically protected. That’s these kids. Nuff said.
Very Likely Safe
Lalas Abubakar
Braian Galvan
Jonathan Lewis
Younes Namli
Jack Price
Keegan Rosenberry
Diego Rubio
William Yarborough
OK, so your best defender, best attacker, and team leader are no-brainer protections - Abubakar, Namli and Price don’t need to put a real estate agent on speed dial this winter.
Jonathan Lewis is young, cheap, fast and promising, so you keep him for his prodigious upside. Keegan Rosenberry isn’t quite as young (he just turned 27 years old) but finding a reliable right back in MLS is hard, and Rosenberry is always good and costs just $165K a year. Galvan and Rubio are also young, inexpensive attacking talent. I mean, I think Galvan’s cheap. I dunno.
Yarbrough is the only sorta maybe here. I didn’t discuss it last week because he technically isn’t out of contract and I had already written too much. But Yarbrough was on loan from Leon last season, and the Rapids hold an option to buy. That situation is one of the many deals the Rapids FO needs to resolve this Winter. Yarbrough is only likely to be protected if the Rapids successfully get a deal done to permanently acquire the dual-national goalkeeper. If they feel they can’t afford to buy him, they’ll leave him unprotected and let Austin try to shell out enough cash for him. That said, I think the deal gets done, and that he gets protected.
Grey Area
Kellyn Acosta
Nicolas Benezet
Nicolas Mezquida
Andre Shinyashiki
Auston Trusty
Based on my ‘likely’ list, the Rapids have eight guys they protect, leaving four more players that they can keep safe. Each of the guys on the list above has good reason to be retained, but also a possible flaw that might allow Pádraig Smith to let them go. Kellyn Acosta is a very solid player for the Rapids. But as an only ‘above-average’ MLS player making no less than $665,000 in 2021, one could make the calculation that it is unlikely he’d be picked, and that perhaps if he were picked, it would be doing the Rapids a favor to clear that much cap space for them. Nicolas Benezet looked good in spurts, but he’s 29 years old and cost $600,000, which is a lot for a guy who started just five games and contributed 0 goals, 1 assist.
Nicolas Mezquida has been the same dude he was in Vancouver; a very good relief number 10 to come on in the 75th minute. That’s a luxury item for any team. Even if he’s not particularly expensive (2019 salary: $320,000), he’s expendable. Andre Shinyashiki is young and cheap and pretty good, but as I discussed last week, he may not be multi-dimensional enough for the Rapids to feel he’s a must-keep. I think he’s likely safe, though, as long as they can come to terms for a new contract for the third-year pro.
Auston Trusty was picked up at the start of 2020 from Philly because he couldn’t win a starting spot there in 2019. Then he couldn’t win a starting spot this year in Colorado over Danny Wilson. Sure, the Rapids may think that this year is the 22-year-old’s time to step up and take over the position. But they may also have spent the past 12 months determining the same thing that Jim Curtin did in Philadelphia: Trusty’s not the guy, and he’s never gonna be the guy - time to cut bait and get another CB in the offseason from someplace.
If the choice was up to me, I’d leave Mezquida unprotected. I don’t think Austin would pick him, and even if they did, a late-game number 10 spark plug is a luxury item, not a necessity.
‘Take ‘em if you want, Wooderson’
Steven Beitashour
Clint Irwin
Niki Jackson
Jeremy Kelly
Drew Moor*****
Andre Rawls
Abdul Rwatubyaye
Collen Warner
Danny Wilson
Deklan Wynne
Beitashour, Warner, Wilson, and Wynne are all out of contract and unlikely to be resigned, so I’m sure they won’t be protected.
Very few teams ever waste a coveted protected slot on a backup goalkeeper, which is smart and also a fascinating meta-activity for MLS geeks to play after the unprotected list comes out on December 12 - which of the available GKs would you pick for your team? Irwin might end up as the best and most experienced on that list - a list which is likely to include Joe Bendik, Alex Bono, Brian Rowe, David Jensen, CJ Cochran, Bobby Shuttleworth, Chris Seitz, Kyle Zobeck, Matt Bersano, Justin Vom Steeg, Zac MacMath, and Cody Cropper.
Rwatubyaye is still very raw; he didn’t stand out enough in Colorado Springs to win an MLS job, and maybe he’s still too many years away for anyone to know whether he ever will. Andre Rawls is a third-string keeper. He’d be thrilled to get a shot to move up the food chain even if it means renting yet another U-Haul (note: Backpass is not sponsored by U-Haul, but I’m not above straight shilling for corporate endorsement dollars if it means I can buy the nice scotch on occasion).
The only two ‘damn, that’d be a shame’ swipes on this list are Niki Jackson and Jeremy Kelly. While I don’t think it likely the Rapids re-sign Jackson in 2021, he’s a nice little bench forward that’ll terrorize the backline for the final 15 minutes if you’ve got him. Kelly might just turn into a regular everyday MLS right back if he keeps progressing and gets better at passing and receiving, and having a solid fullback in reserve is a wonderful luxury. Just ask Sam Vines, who was obligated to play every minute in 2021 (except for the Rapids first-round playoff defeat) because there wasn’t anyone compelling to relieve him.
That’s enough. See you next week, and if you haven’t already, kids, click the button to subscribe. It’s free.
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*: A more pessimistic writer might say here ‘how the f*** did we squander the last four years? That should have been us in the MLS Western Conference Championship!’ But I’m not gonna say that. No sir.
**: There has never been a Rapids player with a confirmed and public transfer value in seven figures. There are unconfirmed rumors, however, that both Luis Solignac and Juan Ramirez cost the Rapids a seven-figure transfer fee each, and that Deshorn Brown netted the Rapids a seven-figure transfer fee when he was sold to Vålarenga.
***: General Allocation Money and Targeted Allocation Money - currency which is not valid in Canada or while playing Monopoly but is actual legal tender within MLS.
****: This joke may not have applied in 2020, and honestly communicable disease jokes might just not be funny at all this year. Sorry, sorry.
*****: I’m hearing that Moor will likely be back for one more season in 2021. I think Austin or Colorado are the obvious landing spots.