2020 Season Preview: Colorado Rapids

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By Mark Asher Goodman (@soccer_rabbi)

Early Spring on the Colorado Front Range can deliver very nearly anything. On Tuesday you can suffer through a punishing snowstorm accompanied by sub-zero polar vortex cold. By Thursday, modest temperatures, blue skies, and a blistering wind will range the open grasslands that abut Commerce City, the home of the Colorado Rapids. And by Saturday, it can be shorts-and-tshirt weather. The weirdness and unpredictability makes living in Denver perpetually entertaining, at least if you have the wardrobe to endure it. I can’t say I recommend becoming a gardener here, though.

All of this sits as a near-perfect metaphor for the Colorado Rapids, who, in their 25th year of existence, are nothing if not unpredictable. They shrugged off a lot of mediocrity and a 0.500 season only to make a run to the 2010 MLS Cup, and then win it. Shortly thereafter, they fired their head coach, Gary Smith, who makes his triumphant return to MLS at long last this year with Nashville SC, and tried to rebuild. Some success and some failure followed, which includes, in no specific order; the signing of more than a few truly disappointing Designated Players; some exciting academy players joining the senior team; tumult with multiple under-performing managers; an absolutely terrible trade of the teams best defensive midfielder for a broken tire and some magic beans; a playoff appearance that featured USMNT legend Tim Howard winning a game on PKs; finding a number of high-performing regular players in the fourth and final round of the MLS SuperDraft; and a player who missed the start of the season because his beauty pageant girlfriend stabbed a steak knife into his midsection. That was a decade, my friends. Snow, followed by wind, followed clear skies with high temps, before you even knew what hit you.

The year 2019 was all of that, but in eight months. The Rapids cycled through three managers, five formations, and a lot of the fans’ patience, only to emerge in the sunshine. Robin Fraser was appointed head coach and rounded out the season with five wins and two losses. He had a little help from some fortuitous midseason additions like Lalas Abubakar and Jonathan Lewis. Those additions really got the team clicking, and changed the dominant narrative around General Manager Padraig Smith from a bumbling neer-do-well (to wit: the signings of Stefan Aigner, Yannick Boli, and Danny Wilson) to a shrewd and clever operator.

And now, the new season dawns. There are solid pieces in place. There are new DPs joining up. There are raised expectations. There is a history of tumult and underachievement. Could be sunny. Could be an arctic freeze. Or anything in between.

2019 in Review

The Rapids didn’t have one 2019 season. They had *three*. The first was Manager Anthony Hudson and his 0-8-2 record, as he tried to produce more attractive, attacking soccer out of a 4-4-2 diamond formation that lacked a clear focal point in midfield. More often than not, the Rapids overexposed their defenders, fell behind early, and failed to penetrate effectively in the final third with an offense that looked stiff and in-flexible, like eleven guys going through specific motions that lacked any guile. Only the mighty holdup play and tremendous inside-the-18-yard box dunking ability of Kei Kamara kept the Rapids from being completely offensively suffocated through those early games. But despite the hamfisted offense night after night, in late April Hudson declared that it was the ‘bottom group of players’ that were to blame. The dude got axed four days later.

Then there was the interim kingship of club legend Conor Casey. Casey simplified things, as the Rapids sat deeper, reserved their fullbacks for defense more often, and played a bit more direct. They also dropped into a 4-2-3-1 and made Kellyn Acosta and Jack Price defensive midfielders; roles that suited them nicely while simultaneously making everyone else on the pitch look better. The Rapids record under Casey was 7-7-4, which took the team from ‘utterly out of the playoff picture without a prayer’ to ‘mostly but not entirely irrelevant to the rest of the league.’ By comparison to the first two months of the season, it was a veritable triumph, and the fans deeply appreciated it.

But Casey was really an emergency hire, and the club wanted a clever and experienced manager to build a real tactical identity, collaborate with the front office, and deliver this team into the promised land at some point in the new decade. So in came Robin Fraser, former Colorado Rapid player and a US international with 27 caps. Fraser arrived from serving in Toronto FC as Assistant, and his last spin as an MLS manager was with Chivas USA, RIP.

Realistically, somewhere in July, maybe around the time the Rapids played one of those midseason cash-grabby exhibition matches against Arsenal FC, the whole of the 2019 Rapids season itself became an exhibition leading to 2020. With the exception of a somewhat limp ‘Tim Howard Victory Tour’ which was curtailed due to injury and ended with a road loss to LAFC, there wasn’t much of interest in the team to all but the diehard ‘Pids fan. A late season kerfuffle between local cable broadcaster Altitude and Dish Network and Comcast didn’t help: the last nine games of the season were unavailable inside the state of Colorado for many fans. That problem is still unresolved.

But, if you were a diehard or had Direct TV, you got to witness: Sam Vines locking down a spot as the team’s reliable left back at the tender age of 19 years old; the emergence of Denver University grad Andre Shinyashiki as a spark plug off the bench striker; and the aforementioned establishment of Lalas Abubakar as one of the leagues best young centerbacks. Exhibitions can be a little meaningless, but if you look closely enough, you can see the faint outlines of meaningful trends emerge just behind them.

Offseason Changes

Colorado shed two big contracts in the offseason with the departure of Tim Howard and Tommy Smith. Howard’s retirement opened up a DP slot, giving the team all three spots to fill. Meanwhile the non-tender of Smith, a TAM level player that earned $640,000 in 2019, frees up some cash that can be spent to get a mid-range salary player. The other departures have more emotional consequence than practical implication. Homegrown Dillon Serna was a fan favorite and was the longest tenured player at the club; 2019 SuperDraft pick Sam Raben never broke through at Colorado Springs; and former Defender of the Year candidate Axel Sjoberg has really struggled in the three years since his breakout performance in 2016.

Padraig Smith made a smart move immediately at season’s end, picking up an unhappy Auston Trusty from Philadelphia. Trusty will likely start alongside Abubakar on the backline, giving the Rapids two of the league’s best young CBs. The Rapids also brought back Drew Moor, a fan favorite from the early 2010s, to presumably do some mentoring and mid to late season minute eating.

But the big moves were all… big. French Left Wing Nicolas Benezet comes to the team from Toronto, who proclaimed that they couldn’t afford to keep him on a TAM-level deal. Benezet is a talented forward who can do all the things, but he also joins a crowded logjam of talent at Left Wing for the Rapids, who used rising USMNT star Jonathan Lewis and MLS Rookie of the Year Andre Shinyashiki at that spot last year. Expect lots of rotation, 70th-minute substitutions, and use of inverted wingers this year in Commerce City.

The Rapids two DP deals are really the determinant of everything for this season, though. Younes Namli joins the team from FC Krasnodar in the Russian Premier League. Namli is supposedly a real-honest-to-Moses number 10 - the exact kind of player the Rapids have been looking for since, basically, forever. At 25 years old, the native of Denmark is in his prime. He comes on a two-year loan with an option to buy; a good financial move for a Rapids front office that has sometimes spent imprudently over the past few years. I already mentioned Yannick Boli, Danny Wilson, and Stefan Aigner, but I like pain so I’m mentioning them again in case you forgot. In Russia, Namli was forced to play as a wide midfielder, and even then was mostly a sub, but before that, he was that classic midfield creator for two clubs in Eredivisie.

Namli’s ceiling has been said to be as high as being as good as Nico Lodeiro. His floor is, basically, Gabriel Torres, the Rapids first-ever DP who joined the team in 2013 and proceeded to underwhelm through his three-year spell. That’s obviously a pretty big range of possibilities. The Rapids season basically rests upon it.

Braian Galvan, a 19-year-old from Argentina, was also signed to a DP deal, but won’t join the club until the mid-summer transfer window, so we aren’t going to talk about him just yet.

OUT
GK - Tim Howard (10/6/19 - retired)
M - Dillon Serna (11/21/19 - out of contract)
D - Kofi Opare (11/21/19 - option declined)
D - Tommy Smith (11/21/19 - option declined)
D - Sam Raben (11/21/19 - option declined)
D - Axel Sjoberg (11/27/19 - waivers)

IN
D - Auston Trusty (11/20/19 - trade from Philadelphia)
D - Drew Moor (11/27/19 - free agency)
M - Nicolas Benezet (1/14/20 - transfer from Guingamp)
M - Younes Namli (1/15/20 - loan from Krasnodar)
M - Braian Galvan (7/7/20 - transfer from CA Colon)

Tactical Outlook

Based on interviews he’s given, Robin Fraser wants to play a 4-3-3. What that 4-3-3 looks like is a good question. Based on matches in 2019, I’d call it a ‘pragmatic 4-3-3’. That means sometimes pressing, but not more than your average team, and likely only situationally. Sometimes it’s fairly possession-based, but probably more dependent on the opponent or whether they are home or on the road. 

The Rapids tactical outlook definitely leans toward an attacking style, though, as the coach gets the players set to have six or seven guys participating in the buildup and the attack, while making good use of the Rapids wing speed. That all translates to getting into the final third with more regularity than the team has in previous years. The Rapids did a better job in the second half of 2019 at getting near the 18-yard box, which resulted in more free kicks and corner opportunities than any other team in MLS. Colorado figured out that getting near to the goal should be a priority, and that translated to a lot of set-piece opportunities that dead-ball specialist Jack Price often capitalized on. Expect more of that in 2020.

Defense

The back four is likely to be 20-year-old Sam Vines, who earned his first USMNT cap in January, starting at left back; Lalas Abubakar and Auston Trusty in the middle; and Keegan Rosenberry at RB. Ironman Rosenberry played every minute of the 2019 season, so let's hope he spent the winter lying on a Caribbean beach chair sipping Mai Tais in order to allow those legs to rest. 

For CB squad rotation the ‘Pids have Drew Moor, Danny Wilson, and Kortne Ford. Ford is bouncing back from a knee injury, and before he was hurt, he looked like a potential star in the making. Drew Moor has lost a step, but nobody positions himself and his teammates on the backline better. I don’t really want to write anything about Danny Wilson if I’m not contractually obligated to. The Rapids will also have 2020 SuperDraft pick Jeremy Kelly to back up at right back, and Deklan Wynne will be the replacement left back. Depending on how the USMNT U-23’s do, the Rapids may need a lot of minutes from Wynne, as Sam Vines would almost certainly be the starting LB if the Junior Eagles earn a spot for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Clint Irwin will mind the net in 2020. He’s a good goalkeeper who’s been rusting for the past two years in Toronto and Colorado as a backup, but his GA-xGA numbers for the past three years of roughly 500-600 minutes per season put him at-or-near league average, indicating he’s solid. Backup Andre Rawls has only two goals in 2020: record some actual MLS playing time, and don’t lose the job to 17-year old Rapids homegrown wunderkind Abraham Rodriguez. My advice to Rawls is: rent, don’t buy, kid.

Midfield

It’ll be Namli, Kellyn Acosta, and Jack Price in the midfield, and there’s absolutely no doubt about it.

We’ve already talked about Namli’s importance, and Price is a good deep midfielder who can serve a ball like the dickens. 

Kellyn Acosta is a real head-scratcher. He’s had four managers in roughly 18 months. He’s been asked to play wide, and centrally, and deep, and high, and as an attacking mid, and as a defending mid, and in a four-man midfield, and a three-man midfield, and a five-man midfield. He’s been disappointing in terms of both offensive and defensive production. I said this in my Offseason Outlook piece for ASA three months ago: “two goals, two assists, and 0.6 Key Passes per game is not good enough from a guy you dropped serious coin on. It's been a minute since Acosta was an ‘exciting up and coming USMNT mid'. In seven years in MLS, he has a grand total of 13 goals and 17 assists in 12,000 minutes of play. Miguel Almiron produced 12 goals, 14 assists in just 2,700 minutes in 2018.” So either this is the year Acosta becomes a reliable two-way midfielder in MLS, or the year we officially stop talking about Kellyn Acosta.

The top teams in MLS get midfield production of 10.0 xG + xA or better from their best midfielder or attacking midfielder. Here’s the Rapids numbers for 2019:

I circled Jack Price in red because, for a holding mid, he’s quite good at producing assists. Nicholas Mezquida, Diego Rubio, and Kellyn Acosta all got circled in blue because, between them, none blew the doors off in terms of xG + xA. Improvement from Namli over Mezquida and Rubio, plus improvement from Kellyn Acosta, should reap benefits. Or at least it is possible that a more dangerous Namli allowa Acosta to be able to focus more on defending and slowing opponents down in transition.

Midfield depth is a question. Colorado has the young and impressionable Cole Bassett, and Nicolas Mezquida will do good things as your late-game midfield sub if you need someone that can provide an offensive lift. They trialled some guys who didn’t stick, and they used some academy players in pre-season too, but nobody that looks likely to make the final roster. Things seem thin until Braian Galvan arrives in July. I dunno what to tell you, man.

Forwards

There’s a lot of looks and a lot of options here, and they’re all really good. The paciest option is to play Jonathan Lewis, Diego Rubio, and Sam Nicholson across the top. But you could also put Shinyashiki in on the left for a bit more technical ability; or you could put him on as an inverted winger on the right. Colorado can also put any of those four guys as wings, or more as free-roaming second strikers, with beefy Kei Kamara doing the box-dunking and holdup play that he is so good at. If they want to play tight, Colorado could play Kei Kamara and Diego Rubio up top and use Namli as something of a false-nine, with one of those other forwards dropping into the midfield as a wide option. I personally would love to see Diego Rubio and Andre Shinyashiki get a full-runout together as a striker pairing, because I just imagine they’d have ridiculous tiki-taka / line-breaking chemistry.

You might be like psssht Shinyashiki? Aren’t all NCAA products at this point in MLS history just cannon fodder, only good for filling out the bottom of the roster for cheap? Shouldn’t the Rapids be using a big money DP striker or a fancy Euro import making a mid-six-figure salary? To that, I would counter with this chart:

In just his rookie year, Shinyashiki proved himself to be an enfant terrible with the ball at his foot; a fantastic finisher; and one of the very best pressing wingers in all of MLS. People who slept on ‘Dre need to wake the heck up.

Picking the front three each game for the Rapids is the easiest part of Robin Fraser’s job. Honestly, if the dude just picked any three names out of a hat each week, it’d work just fine.

2020 Expectations

Colorado haven’t made the playoffs since 2016, and have had four coaches since then. There have been promises made, and those promises have now come to fruition. With a new coach and new DPs coupled with a brief run of success to conclude 2019, everything looks good for Colorado. 

The expectation is a 7th-place or higher finish for the Rapids; anything short would be profoundly disappointing. And if Namli and his supporting cast come good, the team could emerge from being a perennial league also-ran to making a deep playoff run.

They’ve spent the money. They’ve found the pieces. They’ve got the coach. They’ve made the fans patiently wait. 

Now is the time.