Write On Sports LLC - "Colorado Rapids 2006: MLS's Mediocre Thorns" by Jeff Bull

Colorado Rapids 2006: MLS's Mediocre Thorns

2006-12-20 16:29:26 | By: Jeff Bull

The Colorado Rapids could be dubbed Major League Soccer’s (MLS) forgotten team - by which I mean if you ask the average fan to name all 13 MLS teams, the Rapids would be among the likeliest candidates for omission. For all that, the Rapids aren’t a universal blind spot. For instance, if you asked a fan of, say, FC Dallas or Real Salt Lake (RSL), he or she would mention Colorado before getting past the third team. The reason: a pair of high profile incidents involving these three teams established the Rapids as a sucker-punching spoiler, just a pain-in-the-ass team to play against. Judging by appearances, it’s a role they have embraced with an oddly becoming gusto.

New Men

After finishing the 2005 season as the third-seeded team in the Western Conference, the Rapids made changes to their roster, some minor, some major. A high-profile trade sent forward Jeff Cunningham, Colorado’s leading scorer for 2005, to RSL in exchange for Clint Mathis - and it’s fair to note that this one still makes half the league’s fans smirk. Colorado fared better in the trade that sent Jean-Phillippe Peguero to Red Bull New York; after all, he hopped a plane to Europe shortly after the trade. Other minor shifts occurred - for instance, they sent Richie Kotschau to Columbus for Chris Wingert - but those few were the big ones - at least in the off-season.

Throughout the early part of the season, Colorado trickled in new players to buff up their offense. Nicolas Hernandez arrived from Argentina and wound up leading the team in scoring. Thiago Martins, who arrived in the move that sent Peguero to New York, replaced him as the team’s physical presence at forward. Aitor Karanka came over from Spain to steady the defense and several rookie draftees - Daniel Wasson and Jacob Peterson - became solid contributors; Peterson approached “key man” status through several timely goals toward the end of the season. In the grand scheme, though, the Rapids didn’t add enough to ACTUALLY improve their squad - and that’s a big part of the tale of 2006.

The Bad

Two things went badly wrong for Colorado in 2006: they, frankly, choked on the road, compiling the worst record in the league away from Denver’s high altitude, and they proved conspicuously susceptible to blowouts - again, primarily on the road. Numbers don’t lie, as the saying goes, and Colorado tied for the league’s worst defensive record: along with RSL, they let in 49 goals in 32 games. This is a curious thing, mainly because the Rapids still had goalkeeper Joe Cannon in the net - who not a few count as the best in MLS - and, on paper, they’ve got a competent defensive corps. This is where the blowouts come into play: 21 of those 49 goals came in just 5 games, each of which the Rapids lost by three goals. In fact, the goal differential in those games accounts more than covers Colorado’s -13 goal differential for the season.

It’s no less significant that four of those blowouts came on the road. The Rapids compiled a wretched 2-10-4 (W-L-T) away record in 2006, which brought them only 10 of the 41 points they compiled for the season. While it’s clear their entirely respectable home record - 9-3-4 - carried them to the post-season, their road woes meant they could never settle, never relax. But there’s another piece to this: that home record - more precisely, the considerable home-field advantage they gain from playing visitors to at mile-high, oxygen-starving altitude - renders fair the question of whether Colorado owes its moderate success to a fluke of location. There is, quite probably, some truth to that...but only some.

The Good

As with a lot of teams, several individual players had stand-out seasons. For instance, midfielder Kyle Beckerman matured into a solid two-way player, not only doing the dirty work on defense, but adding six goals to the one he scored in 2005. Nicolas “Nico” Hernandez served as the team’s top scorer - and he was often the clutch player as well. Jacob Peterson’s late-season heroics have already been noted, but his four goal, three assist season shows signs of a promising career for the rookie. Terry Cooke led the team in assists with 12, but the stats don’t speak to how crucial he was in adding width to Colorado’s attack - particularly after the departure of left-sided player Dedi Ben-Dayan, who returned to Israel in mid-season; and the fact that he filled Ben-Dayan’s on the left speaks both to Hernandez’s versatility and overall importance to the team.

But the key thing Colorado did in 2006 was perfect the role of gadfly. By eliminating FC Dallas from the first-round of the post-season for the second consecutive year, they firmly established themselves as their bogey-team. Another flash-point proved to be the Rocky Mountain Cup, an informal tournament between the Rapids and Real Salt Lake. Both games ended with what can only be described as full-blown melees, with players either in each others’ faces and throwing punches; Colorado’s celebration after capturing of the Rocky Mountain Cup proved so provocative that the owner of Real Salt Lake actually took the field to confront their players. As much as fans aren’t supposed to enjoy players behaving badly - and in both incidents, Colorado players and fans state they were pelted with debris during and after the game - there’s something admirable in Colorado’s “screw-you” attitude. It’s something a squeaky-clean league like MLS could use.

Wrap-Up

Fun as it was to see Colorado goad some teams to madness and barely-justified suspensions, the fact is they’re simply not that good a team; on not a few occasions they were outright dire. Alleged key players - think Jovan Kirovski and Clint Mathis, both of whom formerly played for U.S. national team - have never lived up to their billing. That they travel badly as they do suggests they gain more from their home-field than they should - though it’s crucial to admit here that Real Salt Lake hasn’t made as much of a similar edge. Still, they possess a knack for doing just enough and head coach Fernando Clavijo gets as much from “cheap” players as anyone in MLS - and a good thing to with his stars playing as they do.

The Future

What will it take for Colorado to go from “good enough” to good? A few more players and continued growth from the ones around. While it’s fair to question what more Kirovski can give - he’s had nearly two years to get it right, after all - it can be hoped that Mathis will make the most of his sophomore season with Colorado. Then again, the Rapids won’t need Mathis so much so long as key men like Cooke, Hernandez, and Beckerman stay around. The biggest question mark for Colorado became goalkeeper in this off-season: an early December trade sent Joe Cannon to the LA Galaxy, leaving the Rapids to rely on the relatively untested Bouna Coundoul in that position. They did pick up two players in the Cannon trade: defender Ugo Ihemelu and forward Herculez Gomez, both of whom have shown they can succeed in MLS; Gomez, in particular, could prove a high-upside proposition for Colorado.

The main thing is, mediocre as the Rapids are, they HAVE reached the semifinals of the playoffs two years running - as in one step from MLS Cup. Perhaps it will only take another quality defender, another forward to push the others, and a fit Mathis to get Colorado to the final in 2007.

Editor's Note: This is part of a series wrapping up the 2006 season for each of Major League Soccer's 12 teams. Readers can find other entries in the series by clicking on the author's byline.

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