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On September 23, the Colorado Rapids reached a point in their 2020 MLS odyssey where the team couldn’t wait to get back on the field. Their 5-0 beating of San Jose put the Rapids within two points of Western Conference leader Seattle, and there was internal confidence that they would continue to rise.
Between the league’s pandemic-induced initial four-month postponement from March, an additional month between the Rapids’ departure from the MLS is Back Tournament, and the season restart in August, continuity had been hard to come by. However, with freshman coach Robin Fraser, the Rapids dealt with the adverse circumstances as best they could and had won three of four heading into a key game against Sporting Kansas City on September 27.
The good vibes were short-lived. One day before the SKC game, 2020 struck again. Three staff members and a player tested positive for COVID-19, training was suspended and the match postponed.
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Several months after the global coronavirus pandemic, these types of stoppages were no longer surprising, but no less frustrating. Local Rapids midfielder Cole Bassett, one of the league’s most promising young players, summed it up succinctly.
“It sucked,” he said. “You just want to keep playing.”
More positive tests followed and they would not play again for 31 days.
When the regular season ended, Colorado managed to play just 18 of 23 scheduled games, three fewer than any other team in the league. The Rapids’ 28 points would still have been enough to break into the eight-team Western Conference playoff field, but they are heading into Sunday’s first-round game at No. 4 Minnesota United FC (1:30 p.m. ET, live broadcast on ESPN) with the No. 5 seed after MLS chose to sort the ranking by points per game to account for inequalities in programming.
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As the Rapids played an extended red-light-green-light game as the rest of the league progressed, club executives kept in regular contact with the league office. Although it was clear early on that the change to points per game was likely, the league didn’t make it official until October 31, when Colorado only had three games left on the schedule.
“We are in the year of uncertainty with COVID-19,” said midfielder Kellyn Acosta. “[The coronavirus] brings many challenges. It has definitely been difficult to run our meetings virtually, with individual training. Training here for two days, having a COVID-19 outbreak and not being able to train for a week or two. Not being able to play five games. It was crazy. “
After losing 4-0 in its first game against SKC, Colorado has progressively regained its promising form and won three games in a row to end the season.
“We feel like we’re on a roll heading into the playoffs,” Bassett said. “So we feel pretty good and we have confidence in ourselves.”
For the Rapids, one of the league’s original clubs, just making the playoffs hasn’t felt like a foregone conclusion. They have failed to qualify in five of the past six seasons and have advanced into the MLS Cup playoffs only twice since winning the MLS Cup in 2010.
When they’ve been successful in the past, it usually came in streaks, and for Padraig Smith, who arrived as athletic director in 2015 and was elevated to executive vice president and CEO in 2018, changing that has become a priority. In 2016, the team finished second in the league in points and made it to the conference final, but an aging roster that included United States internationals Tim Howard and Jermaine Jones wasn’t built to last.
“The real problem was, we didn’t feel like that kind of success was sustainable,” Smith said. “Ultimately, we wanted to be a club that was not in the playoffs every two years and that did not challenge the titles once a decade, but was an eternal playoff team and a team that competed for titles year after year.”
After his promotion to the title, Smith, along with senior vice president of business operations, Wayne Brant, changed gears. They refocused efforts at the club’s academy, sought out young players from across the league, and incorporated more analysis into their recruiting and approaches on the field, while thinking longer term.
After a series of COVID-19 cases, the Colorado Rapids have recovered and are in good shape to enter the MLS Cup playoffs. Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports
Smith’s interest in sports analysis dates back to 1999, when he headed to the US from Ireland during a college summer to play for the Harwich Hurricanes of the Cape Cod Amateur Soccer League. He became a fan of the Boston Red Sox, learned about baseball sabermetrics, and was inspired to try to develop similar ways of identifying efficiency in soccer. That helped him navigate his way to financial positions at the Irish Football Association and UEFA, before returning to the United States to join the Colorado headquarters.
The first major move in rebuilding was a 2018 mid-season trade for Acosta, who at age 22 had already been capped 17 times with the United States but needed a change of scenery after passing through the FC Dallas academy and spending parts of six seasons with the first team.
“The Acosta trade, for me, was a statement trade for this club,” Smith said. “There was a story in terms of how our squads had been built in the past and we made a very clear statement that we were changing course and direction.”
In 2019, another mid-season trade brought winger Jonathan Lewis from New York City FC, giving the club another young American with experience on the national team. The exchanges of the central Lalas Abubakar (Columbus) and Auston Trusty (Philadelphia) were carried out in a similar mold.
Even as the Rapids have focused on building a young core, Smith acknowledged that there will always be a need for seasoned national players and high-end talent acquisitions across the global market to complement the roster. In that regard, midfielder Jack Price, who played a small role for Wolverhampton Wanderers on their way to promotion to the Premier League in 2017-18, has been a key figure in midfield since arriving in 2018, while the midfielder Younes Namli, the only player on the Designated Player team, and forward Diego Rubio have been two of the team’s most important attacking players.
Colorado’s change in philosophy has not been without its setbacks. In 2019, the team’s 11-game start (0-9-2) was the worst in MLS history and contributed to the dismissal of second-year manager Anthony Hudson. Before being fired, Hudson publicly put the blame on the team’s lack of talent, even after his last game in charge, a 1-0 loss to Atlanta, when he said: “We’re fighting at the bottom with a group of lower players. and we have to find a way to get a result. “
But after Hudson, who is now coaching the United States U-20 men’s national team, was replaced by Conor Casey on an interim basis, Colorado turned things around and racked up 1.6 points per game for the rest of the season, a rate that it would have been good enough for third place in the Western Conference over the course of the entire season.
As Colorado relived its season, the organization took time to decide on a permanent replacement. About two months after first making contact with Fraser, then an assistant to Toronto FC, he was announced as the club’s ninth permanent manager in late August, after the club paid Toronto $ 75,000 in general allocation money for his rights. For Fraser, the concept of being in a place that wanted to attract more players to its academy and have the opportunity to develop those types of players had a lot of appeal.
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“I like the idea of creating players who can think and make decisions,” Fraser said. “For a long time in this country, it seemed that good players were faster players, stronger players, more skilled players, but for us to really move forward, we need to have those players and they also need to be able to think and make decisions. Therefore, I have always found it interesting in training to try to influence children’s decision-making abilities. “
After Philadelphia’s run to the Supporters’ Shield this year, relying heavily on past players like Mark McKenzie and Brenden Aaronson, the league’s shift toward investing in player development only hopes to accelerate.
Colorado hasn’t exactly been at the forefront of the league in terms of getting production out of its academy, but of its 12 all-time local players, eight have arrived since 2017 and the team was ranked No. 5 in the league in percentage. of total minutes played this season by players under 22 years old (16.17%), behind only LAFC, Philadelphia, Montreal and Vancouver.
In Bassett and left back Sam Vines, the Rapids have two of the best examples in the league of how an academy can pay off. Both players were included in the MLS 22-under-22 list for the second year in a row and feature on US Soccer’s busy 2021 schedule, which includes the U20 World Cup, Olympic qualification, and potentially the U23 Olympics. the Gold Cup and the conclusion of the CONCACAF Nations League. Vines, the only Rapids player to play every minute this season, received his first senior team cap in January, while Bassett appears to be on track for an eventual transfer to Europe.
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“If you can produce the best talent that contributes and helps you succeed in MLS and then potentially sell that talent in Europe and reinvest that money in academia, recruiting and player development,” Smith said, “then you really can. create a model business that would have long-term sustainability. “
In 2020, Bassett was ranked No. 4 in the league in goals plus assists per 90 minutes and No. 5 in distance covered by 90 minutes (11.33 km). He understands that his ability to experience that proof of concept has the potential to have a lasting impact on youth soccer in the region.
“You don’t connect as much as a child when you don’t see [first-team] players who were in a similar position to you when you were younger, “Bassett said.” Sometimes you don’t see it as a realistic goal that you can achieve.
“It started between me and Sammy. We worked our way through and we’re trying to pave that path for all these Colorado kids to see that they can really do it.”
Source: espn.co.uk
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