By Rapids Rabbi
I mean, come on. Really? What kind of cosmically cruel soccer tomfoolery was that? 
Coloradans, coming on the heels of a year of penance and suffering for the faithful, enter 2018 full of hope and newness. And how is our loyalty repaid? With a stoppage time loss in New England, followed up by a shoulda-been, coulda-been home win that was stolen, yet again, in stoppage time. The soccer community typically refers to such disasters as the fickle nature of ‘the soccer gods’. As a staunch monotheist (I think my credentials here are pretty safe), I am more inclined to think that we have somehow displeased the Universe in some way. Perhaps a club official moved an owls nest from the rafters in the offseason. Perhaps the sudden addition of beards to the club (Enzo Martinez, Jack Price, Eric Miller is growing one) has inequitably distributed the energies across the club and created some kind of disturbance in the force*.
This is the point at which you might want to start screaming at your laptop or tablet: “We collapsed! We suck! That’s it! There is no disturbed indian burial ground or series of misaligned chakras causing us to fall apart after the 80th minute! This is crap soccer!” Yes. Yes. This, too.
Still. I will always be here as the voice of both the logic and the spiritual mystery of football. It is true that the team tactics went sour and the defense broke down. But also, it emotionally hurts to lose or to get drawn in extra time like this. It hurts in your very soul. I wrote the recap for this game, sitting virtually alone in the press box, combing over plays and stats, slapping the table and quietly muttering expletives that holy men of God should not be muttering.  It is ok to break down the game in your mind like a rationalist and to ascribe rational explanations for a 2-2 draw. But if you love soccer - if it is truly embedded deep in your kishkas - you should also be prepared to experience the highs and lows of the game with your very soul.
They say 2-0 is the most dangerous lead. They say 2-0 is the most dangerous lead in soccer. In this match, ‘they’ would be right, but only because the Rapids gave Sporting Kansas City every opportunity to get back in this game in the second half.
For a full recap of the game, click here.
The Rapids got their lead by making the most of their chances. Their first two good opportunities were both converted. The first was a great cross from Edgar Castillo to Dominique Badji, and on the second, Tommy Smith struck an insane 60 yard pass that Joe Mason settled and put away. With still 80 minutes left in the match, the home team was in charge with a 2-0 lead.
The team played conservatively: the backline punted everything long, the team ceded possession to SKC, and prepared to defend with a 5 man back line fronted by the three midfields, plus a roaming striker doing a little harassment. SKC drew the match up 2-2, so obviously the tactic deserves to be reexamined.
First, here’s the Rapids possession stats for the game.

That's a lot of blue for roughly 70 minutes of a 90 minute game.
After building a 2-0 lead, the Rapids clearly decided to let Peter Vermes' men have the ball all to themselves. Colorado did this by playing cautiously and clearing everything into the final third rather than trying to play out of trouble or build from the back. The Rapids also were out-possessed because they elected to play long balls, and play on the fast counter-attack, instead of hanging on to the ball and slowly working it around and up the pitch. Letting the other guy have the ball is not an inherently bad tactic. It just requires that, in return, your team must defend ferociously.
The Rapids didn’t defend ferociously.
That’s a product of yet another lackluster performance by the back three, who I have already taken to task in the last Backpass. But let’s look a little closer.
Here’s a look at one… two… three… four… five different instances in which the defense did not do its job to contain and prevent Sporting from taking dangerous shots.
(This writing platform doesn’t allow embedded gifs or tweets, so in order to see video of those plays, click the link, view the gif, then click the 'back' button on your browser in order to come back to the article. It’s kind of annoying. The management regrets the inconvenience.)
Collectively, there are two basic problems in all five plays. The first problem has to do with the shape and positioning of this 3-and-5 defense (3 midfielders, 5 defenders). Until this year, the Rapids defended deep in two banks of four, which is a nearly universal defensive array in MLS. A five-man backline typically puts three (sometimes four) players in front of it. Those three midfielders are responsible for protecting ‘zone 14’, the spot above the 18 yard box that creates a tremendous number of dangerous chances. The problem is, of course, the three are giving up dangerous space out to the sides that used to be defended by wingers - three defenders can't cover as much space as four, so they pinch in a bit more. In a 3-and-5, one of the five defender may need to step out to the ball there and come off of the line, with the expectation that someone else will rotate over into the space he just vacated. Especially on SKC’s second goal, that really didn’t happen. Overall on these five plays, the defense wasn’t in a five man line. The line constantly has gaps opening up. KC just ran at those gaps, passed into those gaps, and got chances from those gaps.
The second thing is an even more basic problem. Defenders must either put pressure on the ball, or cut off the passing lanes. So many times in the examples gif’ed, there was a defender exposed, not doing either of those things.
For example, in this play, (number four from above) the Rapids are in a 3v3 along the wing, but Marlon Hairston (#94), Deklan Wynne (#27), and Danny Wilson (#4) are afraid to attack the passing lanes, while also giving SKC time on the ball and space to make passes because they aren't attacking the ball. It looks like they’re afraid to get in close on the attackers Felipe Gutierrez and Khiry Shelton for fear they’ll get dribbled. Thankfully, the cross on this play to the back post is lousy, and Edgar Castillo and Tommy Smith are also back there marking their guys well. But overall, the defense just looks suspect here.
In this play, (number three from above) Danny Wilson (#4) is in transition, but he doesn’t attack the ball or close down the lane and stop the back-splitting pass. He's just floating between the lines, in space. This could have been disaster if the pass hadn’t been overhit so hard.
And, of course, the denouement of bad defensive plays on the night was that second goal (number five from above). You should click on this play and rewatch it, but not as many times as I rewatched it. Here’s a list of all the things going wrong on this play:
1) Nana Boateng (#21) over-pursues Felipe Gutierrez and gets left for dead.
2) Marlon Hairston (#94) closes down space wide, but needed to close down the ball and stop the entry pass from Gutierrez. Or drop deeper and more inside - he’s instead chosen to shade outside and give up the inside.
3) Watch Jack Price on this whole play. He marks Diego Rubio initially, then loses him. Twice, by my count. Rubio scores the goal.
4) Danny Wilson (#4) steps up to Gerso (#12) when he gets the entry pass. Then he does nothing as Gerso passes right around him to Khiry Shelton (#14) - doesn’t drop into the passing lane, doesn’t make a play for the ball.
5) Tommy Smith (#5) plays Khiry Shelton onside (meaning, he dropped too deep with his man, giving SKC a more dangerous shot closer to goal and putting Shelton in the play instead of having him potentially offside.) Had he stayed level with the ball, Gerso would have never had that pass to make in the first place. Smith jumps up and down afterwards in frustration.
I’ve rewatched this gif like 50 times now. I gotta stop. My head is gonna explode.
The defense in this game constantly looked like it didn’t know what it was supposed to do. The wing backs looked good: Castillo and Hairston stepped in front of balls constantly and were constant buzzing pests. If we could clone them and put them at the backline and at defensive midfield, we’d have been alright. For me, I could be ok with the tactic of bunker-and-absorb after getting the 2-0 lead. I’m not ok with the way this team is defending. I hope Anthony Hudson isn’t either.
Enzo poised for a breakoutOther than Tim Howard, who had nine saves in this match and was really a difference maker to earn a point, the best player on the pitch for Colorado was Enzo Martinez. He had this great opportunity on the dribble where he just melts Ilie Sanchez into a puddle, and then fires a shot from long range in the first half that just barely misses. And then in the second half, he absolutely murdered MLS 2017 Defender of the Year Ike Opara on this dribble, getting deep inside the box in the process, only to indecisively turn it over.
He doesn’t have any goals or assists yet, but I think it’s coming. His work rate is phenomenal, his intuition looks good, and his off the ball movement after he passes is always crisp and dangerous. Put him on your fantasy team because eventually, he’s going to blow up. 
Sub the wings, CoachMy assumption was that if you are going to play with wingbacks running the length of the field nonstop at 5,280 feet of altitude, you were going to need to relieve them. No other player on the field is going to rack up as much mileage as the wingbacks; so unless you want to surrender a competitive advantage to your opponents by gassing your own boys, it might do to plan on subbing them off.
In this match, Anthony Hudson brought on Nana Boateng in the 61st for Johan Blomberg; Niki Jackson in the 64th for Joe Mason; and Jack McBean in the 84th for Dominique Badji. Mason was apparently not match-fit to go a full 90, according to Coach Hudson’s comments in the post-game conference, and Badji had to come off with a late knock. I don’t quite get starting a striker you know can’t go 90 minutes, and I don’t get not bringing on another fullback, and I don’t get putting on Boateng, who is still a bit of a mystery as to what he is, instead of Micheal Azira, who is a defensive menace par-excellance, when you’re trying to hold a 2-1 lead.
New Stuff at Dick's!To a sellout crowd of 17,424 fans, the Rapids added a bunch of new things I mentioned on the ‘Holding the High Line’ podcast, which you should be subscribed to. Go on. I’ll wait. They also added one surprise.
The team had pies over at the new GB’s stand at the South end. You tell me if they were good. They also had flags in each section. I liked that look! And there was DJ Jenny Jones, who I enjoyed a lot more than our old pre-game warm up, chock full of ads and bad country songs.  Although I did think the remix of ‘Enter Sandman’ right before kickoff was an odd choice. The original version of that song came out 27 years ago. That song is so old, even Tim Howard considers it ‘oldies radio.’ And I’m a Metallica fan. If we’re gonna go classic, let's get Jenny a vinyl of the Misfits.
But the real surprise were the electronic sideline boards! I’ve been bitching about out analog and quaint hoardings for years now, so it’s great that the Rapids have joined the 21st century with the fancy new digital signage down on the pitch. I so relieved. I was beginning to worry about whether Stan Kroenke was financially doing alright - now he can really start raking in the advertising dollars.
--  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  
* You probably think I’m joking. A little, yeah. But also, as a both an arch-rationalist and a spiritual practitioner, sometimes this kind of new age malarky should be given some credence. Don’t dismiss anything. You just don’t know, man.

March 13, 2018

By Rapids Rabbi

An enduring image of 2017 - an image so enduring that the Colorado Rapids opened a documentary-style film on their burning offseason motivation with it - was Dominique Badji missing a penalty kick away to Seattle on the final day of the season. The Rapids lost that game 3-0, so the goal was purely symbolic. But it would have given Badji double digit goals. Also, the moment it toinked off the post and out, it seemed to express all of the disappointment for fans that had been pent up throughout the seasons 34 games, 19 losses, 2 different coaches, and recurring disappointment.

That failed PK was certainly on the minds of Colorado Rapids fans when Jack Price stepped up to the spot in the 55th minute to take a penalty that would have drawn the Rapids even on the road against the New England Revolution. New player taking the kick. New coach. New formation. Eight new players on the pitch. New script? Nope. PK miss into a not great spot and the rebound put high over the bar. Or as my friend said it with her voice dripping with sarcasm: Rapids 2018- new look, same great taste.

That’s a narrative (a good one), and it is borne out of suffering and pessimism that comes with rooting for a soccer team that was bad in 2017, and 2015, and 2014. But, in a phrase from the epic soccer classic ‘Miracle of Castel di Sangro’, “la stagione è lunga e dura - the season is long and harsh.” It is foolhardy to write a woe-unto-me chronical on just the first game of the Major League Soccer Season for Colorado. The narrative I composed in the first two paragraphs is not necessarily the right one to frame this season. There are miles to go in this season, and there is no clear narrative yet.

There were encouraging signs. Niki Jackson, a fourth round SuperDraft afterthought, came on to score a goal in his first MLS league match. The wingbacks, Edgar Castillo and Marlon Hairston, both looked defensively solid. Johan Blomberg can place a ball. And there are other events from this game that seem like aberrations, to be sifted out and ignored going forward. Jack Price had a bad game all around. In addition to his double penalty miss, Price was not great in the attack, and had four turnovers on passes in the Rapids own half in spots that all could have been disasters. Price is a good footballer, and this is almost certainly a hiccup. 

And then there are broader things to keep an eye on. 


Hello there, Ugly Route 1 Football. We didn’t miss you.

If you watched most of the MLS games in matchweek 1 and 2, you saw a lot of pretty soccer. Toronto FC vs Columbus in week one was filled with spectacular technical football! NYCFC was fun to watch, as was LAFC in exploiting RSL over and over and over around the edges. The RBNY-Portland game was excellent and tightly contested until the wheels came off for the Timbers for the final nine minutes. 
Colorado-New England, on the other hand, was not pretty soccer.

The two teams combined for the most long balls of any games played in week two; 81 for New England, 98 for Colorado. The LA Galaxy also had 81, and then no other team in MLS had more than 70. The Rapids had ⅓ more longballs than almost every other team in the league. Fully 25% of the Rapids passes were long balls. By comparison, 11 teams this week were at 15% long balls or less. Only Minnesota, LA Galaxy, New England, and LAFC were over that number.

The plan for Anthony Hudson’s men was clearly to defend deep in the first half, kick it long to Badji, and don’t concede the first goal on the road. If you do concede, re-evaluate and commit more men into the attack, but also keep kicking it long. You all recognize this formula. Rapids fans remember it as ‘Pablo Mastroeni, first half of 2015’. Again, it’s just one game, and it was on the road, and being defensive in order to get a road point with a Rapids team that lacks strong attacking options is understandable. But God help me if watching 75 minutes of head tennis isn’t boring as snot.

Again, it’s still early. But let’s revisit Padraig Smith’s ‘Rapids Way’ op-ed , composed way back in August, for a moment. Padraig wrote:
“It’s simple — we have to improve. And in doing so, we need to become a more attack-minded team… We will look to target players who play with boldness and urgency... with high soccer IQ and game intelligence. Explosive players with good mobility. Players whose first instinct is to drive forward, to seek out the line-breaking pass, and to take on his opposite number.”

I believe it will come. But we certainly haven’t seen the team make use of its players in a 'bold', 'urgent', 'attack-minded', 'explosive' way yet.


Rabbi’s Tactics Corner

A thing I noted in my column two weeks ago was a play I saw the Rapids use to great effect against Toronto in CCL; a play I’ll call the ‘Triangle and Go’. Colorado gets the ball along the wing and plays a series of short passes  between three players. The first (and sometimes second) player make the pass, and then he releases on a break, and the third player on the pass sends a through ball to him/them. The triangle draws defenders in, and the first player on that pass is off making the run while the defenders have their attention on the ball.
The Rapids tried it a bunch against New England, and New England stopped it. 

Click this link to see a gif of the triangle-and-go, and how NE stopped it 

(Note: our platform at Around MLS can’t embed gifs or tweets, so this hyperlinking to a gif is the new normal. But it’ll open a new tab, so that’s cool and easy. Just try it.)

I think they knew it was coming. On this play New England stopped it, and looking at the action map for the first half, New England stopped it all game. That map shows you that the Rapids often have clumps of short-passing action on the wings, right around the start of the final third, followed by nothing.

This particularly example that I gif'ed occurred down the left flank, as Colorado tried to run their offense through Edgar Castillo (a thing they did a lot of in this game). The Revs put four midfielders onto that side in a line. That overloading allowed the defenders to break and run with the attackers (in this case, Castillo and Enzo Martinez), and to close down the pass through, too. Jack Price still makes a good play to Castillo, and Castillo nearly fights through it anyhow. But this play, a bread-and-butter staple for Colorado in creating chances against TFC, never worked on Saturday, and there weren’t a whole lot of other things they cooked up either. Price on this play didn’t see that the overload left Blomberg and Hairston open to his right, forming a better option.

Early concerns for the back three

In both legs of CCL, there were moments when the back three of Danny Wilson, Tommy Smith, and Deklan Wynne looked shaky. Again on Saturday, they had issues. In particular, they looked pretty awful on the first Revolution goal at 48’.
Click to see the Revs first goal by Diego Fagundez

In the first phase with the ball at the foot of Cristian Penilla (#70), Deklan Wynne (#27) gets turned inside out in a one-on-one and can’t make a play. It’s not great, but it’s also excusable - one-on-ones happen, and Danny Wilson (#4) slid over to close out a possible shot, forcing Penilla to unload the ball. He slides it across to the streaking Fagundez, who is totally unmarked in the box because Enzo Martinez and Tommy Smith have collapsed on Teal Bunbury. It’s Smith’s job here to direct Martinez, and it’s Smith’s job to be in a spot to eithe close down that pass or close out the man, since Martinez closes on Bunbury. Smith does neither, he’s in no-mans-land, and the Revs go up 1-0.

It’s fine to say that last year’s backline that was composed primarily of Eric Miller, Axel Sjoberg, Kortne Ford, and Mekeil Williams wasn’t good enough, and to bring in new players. It’s fine to bring in a whole new defensive system, too. But they need to be upgrades, not a swapping of one set of disappointments for another. Those new players haven’t impressed me so far, and now you’ve lost Kortne Ford for two months to a knee injury, and Ford was probably the best of the central defenders in CCL. The sample size is small, so it will take a few more games for us to truly get a sense of this back three. But right now, I have concerns as to whether Tommy Smith and Deklan Wynne have truly earned the right to start over Axel Sjoberg and Jared Watts, and considering these are some of the marquee off-season signings meant to rebuild and redirect this club, it is worrisome.

Smith did have this great headed shot in the 27th, though, saved by an even better dive from Revs GK Matt Turner. Hope springs eternal.
Click here to see the Smith shot and Turner save


Action Jackson and the Tierney Dagger

Boy, the Rapids have a way with fourth round draft pick forwards. In 2015, they took Dom Badji, and he’s been a much more successful player than almost anyone in that years draft except maybe first round picks Cyle Larin, Tim Parker and Christian Roldan. This year, the Rapids whiffed on three of the four forwards they picked in the SuperDraft: Alan Winn signed with Nashville SC; Brian Iloski went to Poland and joined Legia Warsaw; and Frantzdy Pierrot went to Europe and has gone missing in action altogether. So they get this kid out of little-known Grand Canyon University, Niki Jackson, in the fourth round. He’s big and fast and he’s scored a lot of goals, but it’s hard to tell if beasting the Western Athletic Conference can translate to a professional career. 

And then he goes into his first MLS regular season game and scores a goal.

Click to see Niki Jackson open his MLS account
Everything about this goal is pretty great. Jack Price mega-sombreros Wilfred Zahibo with a lovely bit of skill. Dom Badji gets his head to it while coming back deep and facing back to goal, a thing the Rapids did quite a lot of in this game as well as in the TFC games. And Johan Blomberg serves in a fantastic short diagonal for Jackson to finish. 

Considering the Price PK biff only minutes earlier, at this point, it felt like the Rapids had rescued a point despite some miscues. And then, the Tierney dagger.

Click to see Chris Tierney’s free kick winner

The wall jumps. Badji makes contact. It just takes an unlucky deflection. But because the Rapids had missed that PK and weren’t strong enough defensively, it’s a game winner instead of a 2-2 equalizer. Colorado shouldn’t have been in this situation - this game could have been 2-0 or 2-1 to Colorado. Also, there’s a bit of karmic retribution here. The foul was drawn when the sobrero-wearing Zahibo, who got into a very dangerous spot and was yanked down by rookie goal scorer Niki Jackson. Damn you, karma.

Please stop with the Jack McBean

Here’s Jack McBeans action map in this game:
McBean is purportedly a striker in this game, and yet he has zero shots, zero take-ons, and next-to-zero passes in the final third (he has that one backwards pass on the left). He’s playing like a creative midfielder, popping up in random spots to connect the offense, but not in a good way. Anybody who’s watched Jack McBean over the last two seasons can tell you he’s not a creative midfielder by any stretch of the imagination. He’s an in the box poacher and beefy-head-it-in guy. 
You do not put it at his feet and have him dribble into the final third, or have him stand off and serve the final pass. His 9 for 18 passing in this match confirms these facts. I’m fine with using McBean as a late sub, or even as an occasional hold-up-the-backline decoy type guy. But if Anthony Hudson deploys him again like this - to do the same job in the same space as Diego Valeri or Sebastian Giovinco - so help me God I will lose my mind. Put anybody else on there - Jackson or Dillon Serna or Enzo Martinez or even Axel Sjoberg, playing the part of Peter Crouch. No more with the ‘Jack McBean - Creative Attacking Midfielder’.
...
Backpass is the Rapids Rabbi’s weekly column reviewing the Colorado Rapids latest game in depth. It will regularly drop on Tuesdays. The Rapids are off this coming weekend, so check in again for the next Backpass on Tuesday, March 27.