MLS Season Preview at The Offside: Colorado Rapids

By: Laurie | March 17th, 2008

There are less than two weeks till the opening whistle of MLS season! Are we excited?

(Shut up, Eurosnobs. Who asked you anyway?)

For the rest of us, over the next two weeks The Offside will be running a series of team previews to let you know what to expect from each team in the upcoming months. (LA Galaxy’s in a nutshell? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say: Expect David Beckham to get a lot of press.)

First up today, we have the Colorado Rapids, with our season preview ably presented by Jeff Bull. Jeff is covering the Rapids for us here while covering the Columbus Crew over at his other blog, Center Holds It. Expect his head to explode sometime around August.

(And yes, he does have a soft spot in his heart for underachievers. Why do you ask?)

Nuts and Bolts — a basic overview of what your team dealt with last year and is facing this year.

Tough start. What did the Rapids deal with last season? Mainly all around madness and divine malice: a series of injuries (e.g. Herculez Gomez, Conor Casey’s eternal recovery), a modest parade of on-field busts (e.g. Roberto Brown, Daniel Osorno), and a series of flatly baffling moves from management (goodbye, Kyle “Heart of the Team” Beckerman; hello, Mehdi “Watch Out for the Wind, Son” Ballouchy). More than anything else, the Rapids watched a season that started with a brand-new soccer-specific stadium and a stirring opening day win over DC United, slowly collapse into a slapped-together scramble for the final playoff spot. They never made it. But, hey, two consecutive reserve league titles cushioned the blow…right?

Oh, and the fans having been baying for coach Fernando Clavijo’s head (by which I mean his job, though some days it’s hard to tell), since the middle of the season. According to rumors, he was retained either because no one wanted the job, or because Kroenke Sports Enterprises, the owner-operators for the Rapids, didn’t want to buy out Clavijo’s contract - so they’re letting him play it out.

What are they facing this year: as pointed out in WVHooligan’s season preview, the divine malice stuck around: he counts seven key players either nursing or recovering from injury. On the upside, a little new blood arrived to help with the turn-around - and I’ll get to those in the appropriate section. But the key challenge for the Rapids in ’08 is nothing less than re-establishing - or is it simply establishing? - the franchise’s credibility. As Eric Wynalda put it in the sidebar to Steve Davis’ ESPN preview, Colorado is a club people “just expect to survive.” Unfortunately, he followed this with unfortunate comments about Jim Rome and the California fires…something about “flaming” describing both…

The star

New arrival Christian Gomez. Without a doubt. They signed a couple other players, but put the bank on Gomez.

DP or not?

Nope. That is, unless I’m misunderstanding the Gomez deal; somewhere in my head, I believe the Rapids even traded their DP-slot to DC for Gomez (a quick search yielded only damnably vague terms like “future considerations”; stupid suits).

The newcomers

Well, Gomez, obviously. But the Rapids also picked up: Raphael Gomes, a Brazilian midfielder, of the holding variety as I understand it; they got defender Tim Ward, a Generation Adidas player, from the Columbus Crew; finally, (nominal) defender Jose Burciaga Jr. came over from the Kansas City Wizards. Oh, and there’s a modest slew of college draftees: Cesar Zambrano, Brian Grazier, and midfielder Ciaran O’Brien (regarded as one of the strangest early picks of the ’08 SuperDraft).

Keep an eye on

A lot of things, actually:

- Gomes/Gomez/Pablo Mastroeni: I’m guessing they’ll all be in the spine of the team, but who goes where, does what, and when bears watching.

- The forwards - e.g. Conor Casey, Herculez Gomez, Jovan Kirovski, and “Tam” MacManus, if he comes. Watch for Omar Cummings, or even Jacob Peterson, to get a shot if this bunch fails (if not before then).

- Everyone flags Terry Cooke and he’s worth watching, if only because he was a star in ’06. There’s also Colin Clark, who had a break-out ’07. Ballouchy is probably in this mix as well…though I don’t know where. The Rapids have good flank players, which should help Gomez.

- Mainly, anything or anyone with a shot of making the Rapids’ attack go. Gomez is the great hope, but he’s the conductor and can’t do it all alone.

- Only watch the defense if things start falling apart back there.

We’ll win the league if…?

…Gomez plays two years younger, both wings fire on all cylinders-plus, and they get not just steady presence, but steady quality from the forwards. But I doubt they’d win the league even then, unless the Earth opens and swallows four playoff-bound teams…and that’s at a minimum. I think the Rapids will do better, they’ll make the playoffs, etc. But win the league? Not this year.

We’ll be in trouble if…?

…This year’s offense looks like last year’s. Actually, there’s no chance of that, for personnel reasons (no, that’s deliberate…it’s “personnel”). Burciaga becoming a defensive liability out left could bite them as well; if it weren’t for the defense, last year would have looked Toronto FC bad.

You might not know…

Toughest one of all…I’m such a Rapids newbie. Here’s to trying…

- After finally digesting the reality that a suburban stadium denies them the free advertising they’d receive from a downtown stadium (as in, “Hey, what’s that massive structure? Oh, a professional soccer team plays there? We should go sometime.”), the Rapids launched an advertising blitz to alert Denver residents to the existence of the 13-year-old franchise…perhaps for the first time.

- I haven’t formally investigated this, but I believe Colorado’s fans might be the angriest in MLS. If it’s not them, it’s Columbus’. Or maybe Real Salt Lake’s. Anyway, as much as they love their team, this bunch is pretty pissed off.

- What is Fernando Clavijo’s all-time coaching record? Seems relevant. This is a little unscientific, but counting the Rapids’ records from 2005-07, and the New England Revolution’s records for 2000-02 (a range I got from The Official Organ’s profile page for Clavijo), I count an all-time MLS record (W-L-T) of 65-80-36.

Yesssss….