Backpass: We can rebuild him. We have the technology.

FC Cincinnati and St Louis City offer interesting blueprint in how to go from zero to hero. Perhaps Colorado can learn from their example.

MLS is a fickle mistress and a constantly evolving thing. The way you won MLS cup in 2013 (two excellent European DPs in their thirties, a gaggle of MLS veterans, and several great MLS Superdraft hits)¹ is not the way you need to win in 2023. This year the winner will likely have three DPs, at least one of whom is age 26 or younger and probably from Argentina; three million-dollar TAM level players; two salty ML veterans, and two homegrowns. You can check my math in December.

The Rapids built a team for 2023 and it didn’t succeed. Meanwhile, FC Cincinnati put together back-to-back Wooden Spoon seasons in 2019 and 2021² with just 6 wins and 4 wins, respectively. Just 24 months removed from that last disastrous season, they have won the Supporters Shield. And meanwhile St Louis City FC, an expansion team, constructed an entire lineup from scratch for this season and have clinched the top spot in the Western Conference. They musta done sumthin’ right. What was it? And how can the Rapids steal the recipe for their secret sauce?³

You down with FCC? Yeah you know me.

FCC finished 2021 with a record of 4-8-22 (WTL), dead last in the league. They made a few changes in 2022 and finished 12-13-9, which earned them their first playoff berth in team history. And this year? Supporters Shield. Here are the moves that got them there, based on the top thirteen players this season in minutes played:

A few things stand out here as interesting.

First, a teardown and rebuild isn’t *really* a complete teardown. Cincinnati have five players from their disastrous 2021 season still on the roster for 2023, and they happen to be several of the teams most productive players. Brandon Vazquez and Alvaro Barreal have been great support players for this team – Barreal has the most minutes for an outfield player and Vazquez has an impressive 8 goals and 2 assists and is still a few days shy of 25 years old. The most brilliant thing, though, is the signing of Luciano Acosta. The 29-year-old Argentine is in the running for MLS Golden Boot. This, after leaving DC United in 2019 for Atlas in Liga MX. It was good that someone in the Cincy front office was paying attention to what he was up to down in Mexico and decided that he was still a valuable asset. Could anyone have guessed he was going to be this fantastic? No, but Lucho would still have been a great acquisition had he only produced half the goals that he has.

In other words, the core of Cincinnati’s awesome 2023 was there two years; it was just buried under 30 pounds of shit.

Second, the guys they picked up in 2022 were acquired in a bunch of different ways - and almost ALL of them have hit like gangbusters. FCC nabbed not one but *two* players in the 2022 Superdraft that are regular starters on this years team - defender Ian Murphy and starting goalkeeper Roman Celentano. Celentano displaced MLS veteran Alec Kann to become the starter quite early in his rookie season. This season, he is 10th amongst all MLS goalkeepers in G-xG, with a -1.49 indicating that he’s an above-average shot stopper in just his second year in the league. Ray Gaddis they coaxed out of retirement. Obinna Nwoboda they found lighting it up with a team in Turkey that I had never heard of till now - they they paid what would seem like an outrageous transfer fee to get him. Of course, the Nigerian midfielder is an every-game starter for the best team in the league, so now that fee doesn’t seem so outrageous.

Another thing to note, and this isn’t evident from the chart, but there are five guys on this roster making over a million dollars a year – Acosta, Kubo, Nwobodo, Vazquez, and Matt Miazga. Only Acosta is making north of 2 million. So it’s a modestly expensive team, but not extravagant (think of what Messi and Busquets are pulling down, or even Bernadeschi and Insigne)⁴. They’re using TAM on several players, and those players are all major contributors. Meanwhile, the Rapids are paying only one player over a million dollars: Andreas Maxsø.⁵

These players came from all the places: Europe, MLS, NCAA, Mexico, South America. Diverse and comprehensive scouting was utilized. But there was no one gold mine in one place: Cincinnati was incredibly good at finding value where other teams did not. Vazquez, Hagglund, Murphy, Celentano, Gaddis and Miazga were all readily available to any MLS team that could pay the price.

The players that Cincy brought in and spent big on were Barreal - $1.7 million on the transfer, $519,000 a year; Nwobodo - $2.7 million transfer fee, $1.29 million salary, and Santiago Arias - $611,000 in salary. It’s a lot to lay out on players that aren’t proven in MLS, and FCC succeeded on all of them. That’s something that a team like the Rapids needs to do in roster construction. They did that with Connor Ronan, but with Kevin Cabral and Andreas Maxsø, it’s harder to say they’ve been as successful. Your out-of-market purchases need to be the right ones.

Lastly, Cincinnati engaged in addition by subtraction too, which I noted on the sheet. The Brazilian forward Brenner was a big-ticket buy in 2020 for FC Cincinnati at $13 million. He was very good, but it seemed like he commanded the ball more than other players, and tactically everything FCC did was tailor made for him. Defensively, he contributed nothing. Cincinnati sold him to Serie A for $10 million, which was good business. Sure, they lost some dough, but I think it seems to be proven that Cincinnati play better without him than they did with him. For the Rapids, one might ask which players might fit that scenario - players who soak up minutes, waste opportunities, have a one-dimensional approach to matches, or simply cost of lot of resources that might be better spent on somebody else. For me, that’s Kevin Cabral and Jonathan Lewis. It might also include Diego Rubio, if he’s going to continue to have issues staying healthy.

King Louis

Meanwhile, St Louis have built from scratch. If they can do it, literally anyone can. So how did they do it? (stats through Oct 7)

St Louis, with one match left in the season, are 17-5-11, on 56 points, and will top the Western Conference to end the regular season. That’ll give them home field advantage through the playoffs. It is possible that they could host MLS Cup – in just their first season in existence.

Nobody saw this coming. Not the MLS punditocracy:

Not me or Matt Pollard either – that link will tell you both Matt and I followed the herd and picked STL for dead last.

We all probably saw the same things, in different amounts: Burkï was washed, overrated, and expensive – another version of 2018 Tim Howard. Big name, taking a victory lap, with nothing left in the tank. Conventional wisdom on Tim Parker is that at age 30, he was over the hill. If he was still good, the Dynamo wouldn’t have been willing to part with him. Jared Stroud and Jacob Nerwinski are proverbial ‘guys that can do a job’ - replacement level MLS guys, nothing more. StL was Klauss, Blom, and 8 empty jerseys who were due to roam the pitch, take some lumps, finish last, and ‘just be happy to be here.’

They have truly shocked the world.

St Louis put together a mix of unbelievable luck and incredible savvy to make a team that worked this well. I think they knew that Eduard Löwen was good, but 6 goals and 9 assists is phenomenal for a first season (so far). Klauss has been fantastic too; despite missing some time for injury, he still has 10 goals. Nicolas Gioacchini has been incredible, and was an expansion draft pick. Has there ever been as good an expansion draft acquisition in MLS history? I might make a shout for 2014 NYCFC taking Patrick Mullins, or 2017 LAFC taking Latif Blessing.

But the point is - if an expansion team can get just one or two average MLS players from expansion, they’re doing really well. STL got TWO really good ones: Gioacchini and Miami’s Indiana Vassilev, as well as and a solid second pick in John Nelson. Miami, of course, blew that one. They started 2023 horribly and clearly could have used Vassilev somehow, but chose to leave him unprotected. Building a winner involves seeing a valuable player on another team that isn’t being used right, and then telling the team holding him ‘tell you what I’m gonna do for you… I’ll take him off your hands for practically nothing.’ Like you’re doing Miami a favor while you pick their pocket.

But that’s not all.

St Louis City hit on the college market, finding a starting CB in Kyle Hiebert and signing him to a STL City 2 contract in 2022. They scouted well: finding quality starting players Njabulo Blom, Thomas Ostrak, and Rasmus Alm in the South African, German, and Swedish leagues.

My sense is that for 10 out the 11 guys I listed above, St Louis saw value where other teams saw nothing. STL only backed up the Brinks truck for Klauss, and he was probably worth it. Everybody else was readily available for the taking, only no other teas saw what STL saw.

I still don’t know entirely how you get a roster this diverse and new to gel so quick. That is the magic of St Louis’ head coach, Bradley Carnell, a 46-year-old South African who worked at Red Bull New York under Jesse Marsch and Chris Armas. He is a virtual lock to win MLS manager of the year. Your manager’s importance is not to be underestimated, especially for an expansion team.

…

There’s no magic formula to constructing a winning team out of the smoldering ruins of a losing team, or out of thin air altogether. You need to hit all the avenues available to you: the NCAA, the bottom end of other MLS rosters, mid-tier foreign leagues, top teams abroad that are looking to unload castoffs, free agents, and expensive transfers. If you’re the Rapids, you even have an option these two new teams didn’t have: the youth academy system. If you can find a few good players in each of these places - players better than what someone else has - and if you can meld the best qualities of each into a cohesive team, those players will be greater than the some total of their parts, and you’ll win.

It takes a deep scouting department. Sometimes, occasionally, you’ll have to spend a bit of money. And not every player will be a success. But I’m convinced that, if they follow the blueprint laid down by St Louis and Cincinnati, that a Colorado front office can build a winner for 2024 or 2025.

1. The 2012 MLS Champs were LA Galaxy; they were led by Robbie Keane and David Beckham; a supporting cast of Landon Donovan, Sean Franklin and Todd Dunivant. A.J. DeLaGarza and Omar Gonzalez were BOTH 2009 Superdraft finds (wow).

2. The Spoon was not awarded in the Covid-shortened 2021 season.

3. McDonalds are really a bunch of rat bastards for taking Thousand Island dressing, which itself is just ketchup, mayo, and relish, putting it on a burger, and calling it ‘secret’ anything. How effing dumb is that.

4. Bernadeschi is making $6.3 million a year. Insigne is earning $7.5 million.

5. Another player, Kevin Cabral, is making over a million, but the Rapids only pay half his salary while the LA Galaxy pay the other half. Matt Pollard and I have come to a broad agreement that he ain’t worth it at any price.