Dear Chris Armas
The Rapids head coach teed off on HTHL podcaster and Burgundy Wave Managing Editor Matt Pollard in the post game presser to conclude the 2025 season. Here are some of my thoughts on that.
Dear Chris Armas,
Back in 2018, probably sometime around June, I went out to Commerce City to cover the Rapids, who were in the midst of an eight-game losing streak under new manager Anthony Hudson. There were just two of us out at Field 20 that day: me, and Matt Pollard. Matt asked the first question, but prefaced it by saying “I apologize in advance if some of these questions are going to seem a bit tough,” to which Coach Hudson replied “Oh I understand, you guys. You’re only trying to do your jobs.” We proceeded to ask about the losses, and if he’d made some tactical errors or selected incorrect lineups. And Hudson dutifully answered the tough-but-fair questions. And we both wrote tough-but-fair articles as a result.
Hudson, mind you, presided over a disastrous Colorado Rapids team, and neither Matt Pollard nor I sugar-coated what happened on that day or any day afterwards. But Hudson was never rude with us in interviews or post-game conferences. Nor were Pablo Mastroeni or Robin Fraser, the other coaches Matt and I have interviewed.
Flash backwards to 2017, at the moribund end of the 2017 season in which Colorado finished on an abysmal 31 points in 11th out of 12 teams; or flash forward to the 2023 season when a player was suspended for taking cash from Brazilian mobsters in exchange for intentionally picking up yellow cards , and the team set a new low in performance, with just 27 points, or 0.79 per game. Through it all, rain or shine, win or lose, Matt Pollard would cover the press conference. Matt Pollard was at training, reporting and gathering quotes. I specifically remember a post-game where the only people at the post-game presser for Steve Cooke1 were Matt and I. Cooke, who was a class act, thanked us both for being the only writers that bothered to show up.2
And in between the games and the practices, Matt Pollard was also driving to his regular Monday through Friday nine-to-five job. Because almost nobody can actually earn a living as a soccer reporter in America.3 Because we all do it for love of the game, and the team, and not because it makes us rich or famous.
For those of you that missed it, Chris Armas was visibly frustrated, and rude, to Matt at the post-game press conference on Saturday night. After giving a snarky interruption to Matt’s question about the Rapids missing the playoffs – “Matt, we didn’t make the playoffs? Always good, you, uh, reminding me of this…” – Armas trashed Burgundy Wave’s coverage of the Rapids as “always negative” and “always poking holes in the team” and “attacking the coaching.”
I get that Armas is likely frustrated at the end of a long and unsuccessful season, but to turn his ire towards Burgundy Wave - the only outlet in the state of Colorado that has consistently covered the Rapids for the past fifteen years - is wrongheaded and petty. I’m not the only person that thought Chris was off-base here, either. Here’s social posts from Ben Wright, David Gass, Braidon Nourse, and Matt Doyle expressing their support for Matt and disappointment in you, Chris.
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I don’t think Matt or his fellow BW writers have written or said anything this season that most fans would find unreasonable. In the loss to RSL two weeks ago, Matt started his recap by saying “The Colorado Rapids have become predictable, underwhelming, and mid.” In the loss on September 20 to FC Dallas he tweeted “Sigh. That’s a howler from Zack. It’s simple mistakes like that that are probably keeping him off the USMNT roster.” In recapping the Rapids August 30 loss to Sporting KC, BW writer Spencer Baldwin wrote “If you thought the LA loss was bad, it got worse with the Rapids losing to a poor Sporting KC side 4-2.” Those assessments aren’t pleasant, but neither is rooting for a Colorado Rapids side that hasn’t won a trophy since 2010 and has arguably put together just two good seasons in the last ten.
This team wasn’t great, and they lost more games than they won, and they didn’t make the playoffs in a league where most of the teams make the playoffs, and Burgundy Wave and the Holding the High Line podcast effectively stated those facts while trying to explain WHY the team failed to the best of our ability. I don’t think it was unfair for me to say things on our podcast like ‘Cole Bassett should be played in a twin-pivot and not on the wing’ or ‘Paxten Aaronson runs around too much without a final product’ or ‘the backline let the team down, and they lost yet again.’
Fundamentally, the point of a post-game press conference is for the assembled humans in the room to attempt to clarify why the result was the result. And if the coach tells the reporters ‘we tried harder than they did, and we are actually better than the score indicated, but we still lost’ - the reporters have an obligation to challenge the accuracy of that narrative. And if the coach doesn’t like the adjectives that go with the recap: ‘predictable’; ‘underwhelming’; ‘poor’; then the coach needs to generate better results. Period.
Chris, if you don’t like the way we describe the game when the Colorado Rapids lose, then don’t lose so damn much, buddy. If you don’t like being reminded by a reporter that you missed the playoffs in the setup to a question, then … make the damn playoffs.
I can’t believe I’m quoting Anthony Hudson as an example of a coach who actually understood the assignment, but I am. Hudson understood that we’re only just doing our jobs in writing and reporting what we see. I get that you’re frustrated, Chris. But you shouldn’t take your frustration out on the reporters.4 They can’t change the results for you. They can only change the adjectives and adverbs that get utilized in describing the latest win, loss, or draw.
Chris, take a good hard look at the causes of this seasons failure and set your mind to addressing those failures. If you and your team do your best to honestly and objectively solve the problems with the tactics and the personnel that led to this past subpar season, you and your staff can fix what ails the Rapids and deliver a successful 2026 season - which is what we all, collectively, wish for.
But first, send Matt Pollard a giant fruit basket or a bottle of Stranahans as an apology. He deserves nothing less for putting up with your foolishness and disrespect this past Saturday night.
Cooke was interim head coach in 2017. Matt and I have covered seven Rapids head coaches: Oscar Pareja (2011-2013), Pablo Mastroeni (2014-2017), Steve Cooke (2017), Anthony Hudson (2018-2019), Conor Casey (2019), Robin Fraser (2019-2023), Chris Armas (2024-2025). Transfermarkt counts Chris Little as an interim, since he coached I think four matches after Fraser was fired. I have no memory of this, although I’m sure it happened.
Watching Josh Gatt and Stefan Aigner grind out a 1-1 draw against FC Dallas en route to a 10th place finish was not a lot of fun. So on some level, I don’t blame the writers for the Denver Post, AP, and other local outlets for not coming out to DSGP after July.
At last count, the list of full-time independent reporters covering MLS soccer was: Jonathan Tannenwald, David Gass, and Tom Bogert. That’s it. The rest of us covering MLS have day jobs and cover soccer on the side when we can, and we do it because we passionately love the sport (and writing).
I will do my best to remain objective to Chris Armas going forward and to let the results on the field speak for themselves - and put this general nastiness behind me. But that’s going to be hard. And I think that’s something every other writer is also going to contend with in trying to cover Chris Armas and the Rapids in the near future. I imagine some fans will feel some negativity in response to this incident, too.
Agree with all of this. The crazy thing is that I’d consider Burgundy Wave on the more positive side of thing. There were signs from the beginning of the season that things weren’t clicking, even though results were good, and I would not say that they focused on those.
Sheesh. I get it -- it's tough accepting a job like head coach of the Rapids, knowing you'll never be supported with talent or a budget that many other organizations have. There's zero room for mistakes. But don't take the job if you can't accept the reality of those challenges. And if you have to trash a dedicated reporter like Matt Pollard to make yourself feel better, that says a lot more about you than anyone else. Deal with your stuff Armas.