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)