Backpass: The Two Youts
Sam is gone. Cole looks soon-to-be gone. What comes next?
The deed is almost done.
Colorado is almost done with the transfer of its two vaunted homegrown players, Sam Vines and Cole Bassett. And that is a very big deal. Many moons ago, Commissioner Don Garber and the MLS owners helped to re-craft the MLS rules around Homegrown players so that teams would retain 100 percent of the sale price of their young players.1 This rule change transformed MLS into an incubator for US young talent, and, after a little time in our domestic league, they could matriculate to teams in Europe. The benefits were two-fold. First, teams could make money selling their youth academy products. Second, the generally higher-quality of soccer product played in the Old World meant that our best young players on the USMNT would improve because they player tougher opponents. Win-win.
This sale of Vines and Bassett is, of course, a good thing, because it means that Colorado has created one of best academies in MLS. In theory, Sam and Cole are just the tip of the iceberg. The Colorado sun, the altitude, and our healthy outdoor lifestyle alongside an academy full of accomplished coaches will produce more Sams and more Coles, who will play beautiful soccer for the fans, fill our trophy cases (cupboards?) with silverware, and get sold to Europe at large profits making Kroenke Sports Entertainment2 a lot of money, which we all know is the thing Stan prizes above all.3
In the short term, though, it stings a little.
Yes, the addition of Mark-Anthony Kaye is great, but this team feels a little weak right now. No attacking fullback in MLS could create as much havoc as Sam Vines. The midfield without Cole Bassett, either starting or off the bench, is weaker. Before, we looked stalwart and dangerous going into the playoffs. Now, the team looks a little shaky.
That is, unless there are young players ready to perform right now, and if the Rapids will play them.
No Rapids Homegrowns have ever been as impactful as Sam Vines and Cole Bassett. Before Bassett and Vines, the Rapids had played more than a few players under the age of 22. But no Rapids Homegrowns have ever played as many minutes as Sam and Cole.
Here’s a chart4:
My research demonstrated something pretty obvious: Sam and Cole earned more minutes than previous young players or Homegrowns. And simply put, that’s because they were good.
But there are always other factors. One other factor is the willingness of a head coach to play a young player and let them get big league experience and even make mistakes, even if perhaps there is a better player available. A coach must be willing to accept the risk of throwing a young player out there. Another factor that determines homegrown minutes is the very existence of a young Homegrown player good enough to make the starting lineup. Because sure, you could play that guy on the U16 that’s pretty good because #PlayYourKids. But if he ain’t ready, he ain’t ready.
With the exception of 2018, the Rapids have often given minutes to young, unproven, developing players. Marlon Hairston and Dillon Serna were both given significant minutes. The Rapids had high hopes that Caleb Calvert would turn into a reliable MLS center forward. And before his injury, Kortne Ford was looking like he would be a cornerstone of defense for years to come. The team has generally been willing to play their kids.
With Vines gone and Bassett soon to follow, the kids on the current roster that might be the next Sam and Cole are Braian Galvan, Sebastian Anderson, Oliver Larraz and Yaya Toure. Galvan currently has 272 minutes; Anderson has 32, Larraz has 24, Toure has 4. A fifth youngster, 16-year-old Darren Yapi, has yet to play a minute for the senior team, but while on loan to the Colorado Switchbacks this past week, he scored his first professional goal against Austin Bold in the USL.
The thing we’ve learned about the Rapids regarding player development is that the future starts now, always. Players get better when you push them. Players get better when they are allowed to make mistakes on a big stage. Players get better with experience. To some degree, that means that you might always have to balance putting out ‘your best XI’ with ‘putting out the XI that *will be* the best, a year from now’. That might mean, for instance, playing Larraz as defensive midfielder over Collen Warner even if you know it might not be best. It might mean selling away a good player like Keegan Rosenberry because he blocks a younger players path to regular minutes. It might even mean that in the short run, you lose a game that might otherwise have been a tie or a win because you need to try some new guys out or get them experience.
It’s a fine line. Clearly the Rapids took this approach with past players - Charles Eloundou5 and Caleb Calvert and Juan Ramirez - and did not get results. Sam Vines was not the Rapids first Homegrown ever, despite how the club hype might make it sound like that sometimes. The Rapids first-ever Homegrown was Davy Armstrong in 2010. After a brief MLS career in which he recorded just 64 MLS minutes, he spent three years in USL, and now serves as a Denver firefighter (!). Sounds like he turned out to be an all-star human being, even if he didn’t turn into an all-star MLS soccer player. And that happens. But we’d never know if the club hadn’t given him a chance.
The Rapids braintrust of Pádraig Smith, Fran Taylor, Mitch Murray, Brian Crookham, and Robin Fraser have balanced development and success, future and present very well these past two years. With 19 games to go, is the team going to go with experience and winning now, or let #PlayYourKids be the new #KeepFighting?
The first big transfer that precipitated this change was probably the Matt Miazga sale. When New York Red Bull sold him to Chelsea in 2016, they kept just 75 percent of the fee, with 25 percent going to MLS. Owners cried foul, since if they were going to be the ones to invest in their academies, they wanted to keep 100 percent of the profit. And so the league changed the rules in 2018 so that teams kept all the profit from a Homegrown sale.
Why ‘entertainment’? Does KSE own Broadway productions? Movie theaters? A burlesque show? I think that’s weird.
He’s a billionaire. He could give local fans a streaming channel for the Rapids. He sucks and he’s cheap, so many of you either can’t get the game or use a sneaky VPN to watch because you don’t get Direct TV. So of course he cares more about the clubs bottom line than the trophy case.
I’m not sure it’s worth mentioning players under 22 before 2015, since the Homegrown rule wasn’t created until 2010 and the Rapids academy didn’t become fully funded until 2008. Somewhere around 2013 is where the idea of an MLS homegrown even began to mean something.
I really liked Charles Eloundou, and I never discovered how he fell out of favor so fast with the club. But I suspect he was one of the worst ‘dribble into nowhere, take ridiculous shots’ players the club has had this decade, and no amount of screaming from the sidelines from coach Pablo Mastroeni would alter that fact.