Punchless Rapids Lose Again

Djordje Mihailovic scored in the 33rd minute of the Portland game on May 28th.  It will have been at least 4 weeks until the Rapids score their next goal after that.  For the second game in a row the home side was blanked, setting the scoreless streak at 237 minutes and counting.

Worse yet, that Djordje goal was the end of a 143 minute stretch where we scored 3 times, in the 70'th minute against FSL, in the 41st minute against St. Louis, and the Portland goal.  Before that they went 297 minutes without scoring between the FSL goal and Yapi's goal right before half in DC.

So in the last 677 minutes of action we've scored 3 total goals, all within the equivalent of a game and a half of time in the middle of that run.  Essentially we're scoring 1 goal every 2.5 games.  The offense of this team is broken.  On Saturday they had no shots on target and two in the second half when in theory they were chasing the game to get an equalizer.  This is while we were as healthy as we've been in attack for a while.  Navarro, Mihailovic, Yapi, and Ku-DiPietro all started and Bassett came off the bench.  Despite that we still looked lost in attack.

I could talk more about what happened specifically in the game, but really the lack of a tactical plan in attack is what it comes down to.  It doesn't matter that Cannon left his man unmarked or that Hansen could have done better to save the ball, if we don't score we aren't going to win.  In the second half there seemed to be a lack of a desire from the team and even or leaders, like Mihailovic, seemed to have their heads down.

In the post game quotes guys like Bassett and Djordje seemed to call out the locker room for not being focused and engaged.  We'll see if it makes a difference in 10 days against the Galaxy.  We've got 3 games in 10 days against teams behind us in the standings.  If we come out of that run with anything less than 7 points, and we really need 9, then the post 4th of July conversation is going to be about another lost season, not about the playoffs.

Rating The Gold Cup Kits - Group A

I'll be reviewing that minimal effort from the Rapids tomorrow, but with the Gold Cup starting this weekend and the Rapids on a 10-day break I wanted to start on a related project.  I've become a bit of a kit collector since the pandemic lock-downs, something I blame/credit Jon Arnold's Getting CONCACAFed for.  First of all, support Jon, he's the best coverage of the confederation bar none.  But thanks to his article about Caribbean sides new looks, especially featuring the new Anguilla kits (created by C38 friend Keith Laubhan), I started getting more into kits from smaller nations and mainly from island nations.  Then companies like Stingz Sportswear and Stimulus Athletic started partnering with small countries looking to kick start their football programs by offering stylish kits that would interest collectors and here I am with Dominica and St. Lucia and Kiribati kits in my closet.

So that leads me here, to rating this year's Gold Cup kits.  Going to go through all 16, split over four posts.  I want to give a shoutout to the Football Kit Archive which helped me find details on some of the smaller countries and smaller companies making their kits.  We're going to go by Groups, starting with Group A today.

Mexico:

That first one is their third kit new for the Gold Cup (and what they wore in the opener), followed by the home and away.  None of these blow me away, though I do like the detailing on the away.  That third kit is very plain and I don't like the centered badge.  I appreciate the creativity in the home but it doesn't fully pull it off.

6/10 - Available through Adidas

Costa Rica

The home followed by the away.  These are both great.  I particularly like the pattern on the home kit.  The away doesn't work quite as well but its still a good look.  I my opinion these are the best kits in Group A.  The only real knock on them is that the new Costa Rican badge isn't as good as their older one.

7/10 - Available through Adidas

Suriname

I'm sitting here watching Costa Rica - Suriname as I write this and the only picture I can find online of the home kit is that first pic above from Football Kit Archive.  Suriname recently moved to Macron and I was hoping that would make it easier to find their kits but no such luck.  The away kit is seen from an online store but there's no place to buy the home kit.  That primary is solid but the away does nothing for me based on the few pictures I've seen.  Its a step down from their last kits with Klupp which had me digging around to find one to buy online, unsuccessfully.

5/10 - Mainly due to the home.  Not available from a trusted online outlet

Dominican Republic

Primary and alternate, as Silver Sport dubs them, shown.  As expected for a smaller country in their first Gold Cup these are pretty basic but done well and they are very clean.  The alternate is your basic white jersey but the home has a bit of texture.  The both have an outline of the country with the flag in it on the back just below the collar which is a nice tough.  Good job on these.

6/10 - Available through Silver Sport

Mickey Mouse Club Time

 

Canaveral National Seashore

I was in Disneyland last weekend but its Florida's Mickey Mouse Club this week as Orlando and our old friend Oscar Pareja come to town tomorrow night.  The good news is that the weather looks great, if a bit hot.  I wouldn't expect any delays but this is Colorado in June so you can't rule it out.  Orlando is 8th in the East to the Rapids 9th in the West but the East is more competitive (the 10th place team in the East would be 6th in the West) so based on track record so far the visitors would be the favorite.   Kickoff tomorrow is the normal 7:30pm.

Availability Report:

OUT: GK Zack Steffen (knee), M Ali Fadal (knee), M Wayne Frederick (Trinidad & Tobago Nats), M Alex Harris (ankle)

Harris is a bit of a surprise, but not one that should be a big impact.  Good to see Bassett off the injury report.

I don't think Cole will start immediately coming back from injury, he'll probably sub in for his brother with 30-35 minutes left.  I don't love Travis at left back but Armas seems to.  The rest feels fairly likely.

Prediction: 2-1 loss, goal by Mihailovic.  Given our recent play its hard to see us scoring more than 1 and its also hard to see us giving up less than 2.  The only teams that haven't gotten 2 against us in the last 10 games are Seattle (surprisingly), St. Louis, and FSL.  Getting a point here would be a bit of a moral victory, getting a win would be a big step in turning our recent struggles around.

Midpoint Check-In

After the Portland loss I mentioned that I'd be back with an Austin recap.  Well I heard enough about the game while travelling this weekend that I decided not to watch the replay and just skip the recap.  But there has been a couple of pieces of news and we are at the halfway point of the season so we should assess the team.

The two pieces of news are first that Zack Steffen had surgery on his knee and will miss 4-6 weeks, while obviously missing his chance to start for the U.S. at the Gold Cup.  I feel lousy for him because the U.S. number 1 shirt is there for the taking and he's missing an opportunity.  We were going to be without him through the Gold Cup anyway so the big impact for the Rapids will be in July when Hansen will be starting while Steffen is in recovery.

The second piece of news is that Tom Bogert is reporting that the Rapids are close to signing Israeli center back Stav Lemkin.  He's a 22 year old international who got his start with Haopel Tel Aviv and was bought by Ukrainian side Shaktar Donetsk in 2023 and loaned to Maccabi Tel Aviv last season.  He started about half of Maccabi's games in 2024-25.  The reported price to buy him is $1.6 million.

This move is a really good indicator that Maxso is on his way out this summer.  In the offseason there were reports of interest from teams in the Middle East and I don't see why you sign Lemkin if you have Maxso.  This is also likely an indicator that one of our DP's will be reclassified or moved on.  Lamkin is U-22 eligible and MLS allows teams to have 3 DPs and 3 U-22s or 2 DPs and 4 U-22s.  We currently have Cabral, Mihailovic, and Navarro as DPs and Bassett, Atencio, and Ku-DiPietro as U-22s.  U-22s can't be reclassified but DP's can.  So we could use TAM to buy down Mihailovic or Navarro (Cabral makes too much) to open a U-22 slot, or we could finally buy out Cabral to do it.  (We could theoretically be moving on from one of the other two DPs, but that would be suicide.)

If Maxso is moving on then we obviously need a CB to replace him.  Rosenberry, Cannon, Awaziem, and Murphy is not enough to fill 3 spots on the back line.  I'm not sure we need to be spending $1.6M on an unproven (at MLS level) on a CB though when we have much greater needs in attack.  We also have to address the elephant in the room that with the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian war there's a natural reaction from some fans to people from either country.  Two days after the 10/7 Hamas attacks Lemkin was interviewed by Shaktar's website and said some things that don't sound great.  But that was over 18 months ago and 2 days after a pretty significant event.  We certainly saw some notable people say some questionable things on September 13th, 2001.  Until I see some more recent quotes from him I'm keeping an open mind about where he stands.

With that thorny issue out of the way, lets take a step back and look at the team as a whole.  We're 17 games into the 34 game season, so right at the midway point.  We are 9th in the West (8th on PPG) with 22 points from those 17 games.  So holding down the last playoff spot.

That's the good news.  The bad news?  We have 2 wins in our last 9 games.  Both of them 1-0 home wins over bad teams (FSL and St. Louis).  In 7 of our last 10 games, including all 5 road games in that period, we've given up 2 goals.  The reality is that after a hot start in the first quarter of the season we've been a very bad team in the second quarter.

Of our new players I'd argue only Awaziem has really played well.  Atencio hasn't had a real noticeable impact and Ku-Pietro's delay to start the season means he's just now really getting integrated with the team.  Murphy has made an effort but it hasn't resulted in much yet.  On offense this team lives and dies with Mihailovic and to a lesser extent Navarro.  On defense we're almost completely reliant on Steffen or Hansen putting up top tier numbers to keep us in games.

Colorado faces a 4 game stint starting on Saturday where they have to pick it up a notch or two.  Orlando is a better team (5 more points from the same number of games) but is on the road.  Then we have a VERY bad Galaxy side at home, a bad New England side on the road, and bad SKC side at home on the 4th.  We need at least 8 points from those 4 games and even that might not be enough because the 4 games after that going into Leagues Cup include both conference leaders and two teams above us in the West (Philly, Vancouver, LAFC, and Seattle).  If we're not at least 30 points at the end of the 4th of July game we can pretty much write off this season.  We won't play another "easy" team until game 27 in mid-August, at which point it will likely be too late.

Consistently Inconsistent

For 55-60 minutes last night the Rapids were on the front foot and were in great shape.  Then the last 30-35 minutes turned into a house of horrors.  Mihailovic pulls up with a hamstring issue (Armas said post-game it was a cramp), Bassett hits the bar from inside the 6 yard box, Antony kills us again, Frederick loses his head and picks up a straight red, and Hansen fumbles a save.  End result, a 2-1 loss from a game that was an inch from being 2-0 Rapids in the second half.

We could go through the gory details of the meltdown but I want to focus on something different.  Namely the number of players that can't be counted on on this roster right now.  Djordje is clearly the team MVP and has a shout both for the National Team and the All-Star Game and a Best XI spot.  Outside of that though, how many people on this roster can be counted on to give a solid above-average (or even average) MLS starter performance game in and game out right now?  Especially if you take injury history into account.

If we focus on just our highest priced players, say above $500K, here's that list (in order from most to least paid):

• Cabral - Can't even be counted on to be a "super" sub
• Mihailovic - As mentioned, no concerns about him
• Navarro - Good work when he's on the field, but has missed 25% of starts
• Maxso - Not consistent enough in his play
• Awaziem - Maybe?  He's new so I'm not fully bought in, but close
• Steffen - This year, yes, last year, not so much, and he's missed 5 of 16 games
• Vines - LOL, very much no
• C. Bassett - He's had a rough first half, good, but not good enough
• Cannon - Very inconsistent IMO
• Ronan - A sub off the bench and not a consistent one

That's 10 players making over $500K, 3 of whom aren't starters and at least 2 others who I feel like we can't count on, arguably more when you add in Navarro's and Steffen's absences.  Mihailovic, Awaziem, and maybe Bassett are the only ones close to a sure thing.

That's a real problem when at least 5 of your top 10 and 2 of your top 5 paid players can't be counted on.  And we saw that last night.  Cabral was useless off the bench.  Mihailovic did it himself on the Rapids goal with a swerving run from midfield.  Navarro, Awaziem, Steffen and Bassett missed the game (or most of it) for injury or recovery from injury.  Maxso was caught out on both goals running back towards goal and marking space in both cases.  Vines was not involved despite being healthy.  Cannon was also caught out on both Portland goals running back towards the goal and marking really nobody.  Ronan was a late sub that did very little.

The Rapids have gone all in on draft picks, homegrowns, and playing kids.  The problem is when your best option for an injured Mihailovic is a raw Wayne Fredrick and your best option to replace Cole Bassett is his rookie younger brother you lose games like this.  The money going to Cabral and Ronan, for example, should be going to better backups for Cole and Djordje.  Until the roster construction is fixed, especially in midfield, the Rapids are going to consistently see-saw back and forth.

Colorado now has 10 days off until our home game against Austin, since the LAFC game on Saturday was move to July.  I'll be unavailable to do a preview for the Austin game so barring any news I'll likely be fairly quiet until after that game.  I home to do a recap though, should my time allow. and if not normal programming will resume with the Orlando match.

Man of the Match: Djordje Mihailovic, obviously.  The game turned on his cramp.