Five years, three websites, and a cross-country move ago, I began writing a weekly column on the Colorado Rapids. The column, entitled ‘Backpass’, was a mashup of soccer tactics, nerdy pop culture references, my own rambly life musings, gifs of gorgeous golazos and advanced metrics a lá Bill James. And now, dear reader, it has arrived at the vaunted digital palace of The Denver Post. Let’s hope I don’t make a total hash of it.

For those of you old-timey readers who’ve followed me here through thick and thin: THANK YOU. Thanks for enduring those times when I have gone ‘the full Bill Simmons’ and wandered dangerously off-topic for several paragraphs when all you really wanted was an explanation of how the Rapids defense broke down again. And thank you for coming along with me to The Denver Post. I will endeavor to make your efforts to follow my writing on its journey across the Internet worth it. In order to show the Post that this it was a good idea to bring me on, I might need some help. I encourage you to click a lot of other things on this page; maybe it’ll give the honchos at the Post the impression that I’m a really valuable new asset to the company.

I might recommend just doing this:

I need the drinking bird from that episode on The Simpsons pic.twitter.com/55qmUFfqWe — Adam Peariso 🇨🇦 (@Adamski) January 4, 2017

If you are new here, and wondering what you are in for, I might suggest a reading list of David Foster Wallace, Drew Magary, Baseball Prospectus, MLSSoccer.com’s Matt Doyle, the original Star Wars trilogy, The Wire, selected passages of the Babylonian Talmud, and (because I now have small children) My Little Pony. I also recommend that you read this column with a refreshing local Colorado beverage or two. It makes me funnier and better looking, or just funny-looking. When the Rapids are engaged in a fit of losing, feel free to drink six or seven refreshing Colorado beverages while sobbing and pounding the floor. That will give you an understanding of the state I am in when I go about writing ‘Backpass’.

I aim to do a few things when I write: to create arguments and play devil’s advocate; to find explanations that are deeper than “these guys put the ball in the net more than those guys”; and, occasionally, to be funny. But most of all, I hope to raise the level of soccer knowledge. Too often soccer is misunderstood or oversimplified. But sometimes conventional wisdom can be deceiving. A midfielder might spend a whole game clogging the middle and recovering loose balls while his partner dishes out three assists in ninety minutes. Numbers might tell you that Player B is the MVP for the game but we at Backpass endeavor to pull back the curtain a little more and shine an outsized stadium flood light on Player A.

Anyhow, thanks for giving Backpass a spin. Beginning Friday, we’ll start to dive deep into Colorado Rapids soccer.