We analyze the Colorado Rapids’ vast organizational problems in the wake of Pablo Mastroeni’s firing, and preview two marquee playoff matchups.
The Montreal Impact and the Chicago got the week started with a midweek game at Stade Saputo on Wednesday night, won by the Impact 3-0. As we preview week 24, we will look closely at the Colorado Rapids and what went wrong there in Pablo Mastroeni’s tenure:
I Wanna Get Better
News broke on Tuesday that Pablo Mastroeni would become the fourth MLS coach fired this season, following Jeff Cassar in Salt Lake, Dom Kinnear in San Jose and Curt Onalfo in LA. Mastroeni has been around the Rapids for the past 15 years (minus one with the Galaxy), 11 as a player and four as manager. He is to Colorado what Ben Olsen is to D.C. United.
It was, in all honesty, a long time coming. Mastroeni’s skill at doing the things necessary to succeed in Colorado — namely, getting the best out of lower-tier domestic players and winning through shrewd tactics — was never high, and that was his ultimate downfall. The Rapids have never been a spending team, preferring to defer to bunkering strategies and Jared Watts-types for grind-it-out wins. Shkelzen Gashi was their biggest investment.
This is not to say he wasn’t equipped for bunkering. That’s something he excels at, in fact. But what happens when you have to do that without your big tall center-back (Axel Sjoberg) for six to eight weeks? Or when your luck goes down and you have to go down the field and score? The Rapids under Mastroeni never had the answers to those questions, and thus the magic of 2016 has been forgotten.
Week 24 pits the Rapids against Olsen’s D.C., a team that toiled along for most of this year remarkably similar to the Rapids in a lot of ways: they couldn’t score, went stretches where they forgot how to defend and, most damningly, put out a starting XI every week filled with below MLS caliber players. This matchup has long been circled on the MLS calendar as a chance to see the two least entertaining and arguably worst clubs battle it out on an obscure Saturday night stage at altitude.
Obviously, that’s changed, after D.C. went ham at the transfer deadline and brought in multiple (presumably) quality starters, including a d-mid, Russell Canouse, an in-his-prime attacker, Zoltan Stieber, and a winger high on Bruce Arena’s list, Paul Arriola. These moves, even if they come in anticipation of a brand new 2018 stadium, do not show Colorado in a glowing light.
It’s hard to argue that the Rapids haven’t fallen behind the rest of the league, in a lot of ways. They play their same 4-4-1-1-looking formation every week, they rely on inconsistent and backup-caliber attackers, and whatever team identity they have is stuck in Mastroeni’s tired and stale grind-it-out ethos, which has been proven unfeasible without numerous advances.
Props on giving Homegrown center-back Kortne Ford the game time needed to develop into a quality starter, at least. Not a lot is going the Rapids’ way and the organization isn’t doing a whole lot about it. Investing in Homegrowns, overcoming a small budget with youth-oriented transfers, clever roster-building in tune with a changing MLS, getting ahead of the field in analytics and player scouting: nothing close to that is happening in Colorado.
To their credit, they know they’ve fallen behind, as they illustrated these concerns in a Denver Post op-ed.
Use San Jose as a model. They came into 2017 with a conservative coach, a roster filled with low-quality talent and a lack of ambition in the ways listed in the paragraph above. Now, they have a new GM (Jesse Fioranelli), a new coach (Chris Leitch), multiple young players getting playing time (Tommy Thompson, Jackson Yueill, Nick Lima) and have made real advances in sports analytics. And Chris Wondolowski is still scoring goals, just this time surrounded by other good players.
A move into this era of MLS has been done by multiple clubs in recent history. Chicago used their TAM more effectively than arguably any MLS team has since it was introduced en route to a first-place-contending rebound from two straight last-place disasters. Real Salt Lake have a better coach (Mike Petke) and are leading a youth movement not seen anywhere else in the league. The Houston Dynamo hired a competent manager (Wilmer Cabrera) and established an identity with smart offseason signings, helping them move from last-place in 2016 to a lead atop of the conference going into the week. Firing Mastroeni should put Colorado on that same path.
Three previews
This week in our game previews: two huge matchups with all sorts of top-of-the-table implications, and a chance for a red-hot team to cruise on national television.
Chicago Fire vs. Toronto FC (Saturday, 8 p.m. ET)
It’s safe to say that this is the marquee matchup of the week. Chicago need a home win to snap a sudden slump and probably to prevent TFC from completely running away with the Eastern Conference, which they already lead by four points.
The Fire entered a stretch of four away games in five needing results to keep themselves in contention; they lost all four of those away matches, including 2-1 at east contender NYCFC and 3-2 at west contender Sporting KC. Their emphasis on possession and pretty soccer has not gone away — they fit in a thorough 4-1 home beating of New England on Aug. 5 — but their bite in central midfield has gone away, as their age and mobility in central defense has started to show through.
Blerim Dzemaili and Ignacio Piatti combined to dominate that midfield en route an early 3-0 Montreal lead midweek. Justin Meram had a feast toward the end of Columbus’s 3-1 victory. David Villa’s work checking back even helped NYC overcome an early red card in their 2-1 win. This has become something of a pattern.
Toronto FC are the kings of ripping apart teams with a lack of movement in the midfield. Dax McCarty’s still got it, but Bastian Schweinsteiger kind of doesn’t, so we’ll see if Sebastian Giovinco goes after him the same way he did Andrea Pirlo three weeks ago in TFC’s 4-0 roasting of the Light Blues.
Sporting KC vs. FC Dallas (Saturday, 8:30 p.m. ET)
These previews are reserved for the most interesting games of the week not covered in the main story — not necessarily (usually not, in fact) the national TV game(s), and often not matches involving the league’s best teams. It’s different this week.
30 minutes after Chicago-Toronto (an extremely intriguing game) kicks off, another huge matchup of prominent conference leaders takes the stage. Sporting KC, tied for the Western Conference lead and one of the top contenders, host slumping FC Dallas, who still lead the conference on points-per-game. This is kind of an important game, and I’m pretty shocked that neither this nor Fire-TFC made national TV — Portland-NYRB on Friday night then Seattle-Minnesota on Sunday night apparently take precedence.
Dallas have seen their long-successful strategy of relying on superior talent all over the field and clever Oscar Pareja management to get them results from most games falter recently, losing two straight to Vancouver and Philadelphia and then settling for a 0-0 draw at home against the Rapids (although they were absolutely robbed of a goal by a bogus VAR call).
Slumps happen. But to stay in contention for a top-two spot in the conference, they pretty much need a point (at the very least) from Sporting.
Seattle Sounders vs. Minnesota United (Sunday, 10:00 p.m. ET, FS1)
The Sounders are officially back after a five-wins-from-six stretch that saw them storm back from a 3-0 deficit against D.C. to win 4-3, pick up a crucial 1-0 win over SKC, and, most relevant to this preview, rip Minnesota 4-0 in Minneapolis.
The Loons are trending the opposite direction from the red-hot Sounders, falling to the bottom of the Western Conference (below Colorado) after their implosion two weeks ago. Forget their 4-0 demolition of pre-roster-blow-up D.C. United: they’ve now lost four of six, including three home defeats.
Their problems are myriad, and about the same as they’ve been for months now. They are disjointed in midfield, lack cohesion along the backline and struggle to build possession from midfield. This should be, on paper, a fly-by win for the Sounders, playing at home on a hot streak against an easily inferior side. That being said, I’m predicting 3-0 Minnesota because that just feels like something that could happen.