COMMERCE CITY, Colo. -- Waiting 'til next year has never been as hard for the Colorado Rapids, who finally found their identity in the final third of the season, only to come up a goal short as their playoff hopes were dashed in the final minute of the final game.
The campaign started brightly for Colorado, showing its promise with a 4-0 blanking of the LA Galaxy on First Kick 2008. It was the most goals the Rapids had scored in a single game in 2-1/2 years, and the team seemed to have finally found a formula to dominate at Dick's Sporting Goods Park, winning three of its first four home games and four of its first six in Commerce City.
The fact that the Rapids first 10 goals of the season came from 10 different players spoke to the depth and versatility of the club, appearing amply armed with weapons to fire from every direction. The club spent the better part of the season's first six weeks in first place, keeping pace in a division in which no one was ready to run away.
In hindsight, however, the early distribution of scoring prowess might have pointed to the Rapids' fatal flaw as the season progressed. Though the team continued to unleash an overwhelming array of shots from game to game, outshooting opponents by a difference of 119, their difficulty in finishing their opportunities and finding the net became more and more pronounced as the season wore on and the desired results proved increasingly elusive.
Ultimately, Conor Casey emerged as the Rapids leading threat in front of the net, scoring a team-high 11 goals, including game-changing performances against Kansas City and New York in August and September, tallying a brace and a hat trick in the respective matches and putting the league on notice.
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SIGHTS & SOUNDS
But the Rapids one-goal deficit between goals scored and goals allowed over the course of the season highlighted the subtle shortcoming of a team that consistently came up shy of achieving its aim of a return to postseason play and a crack at the MLS Cup.
"Since I've been here four years, we always start off well as a team," midfielder Terry Cooke said. "We always go through a bad patch at midseason. And we always seem to [play well in the final part of the season]. We went through a really bad patch in the summer. There was a lack of consistency on a weekly basis, especially midseason. We lost some key games at home. We let quite a few games slip this year that we should have won. That's been our downfall."
Lack of consistency had been the bugaboo haunting Colorado for much of Fernando Clavijo's 3-1/2-year reign as head coach. The Rapids hit rock bottom in that bad patch Cooke referred to in late July and early August, going through a four-game winless streak and falling to the Western Conference cellar after being shut out in back-to-back home matches against Columbus and Toronto.
The fact that Colorado had played some of its best soccer in a friendly with Everton sandwiched between the two defeats highlighted the rollercoaster nature of the Rapids' campaign.
"We played against Everton, a Premiership side in their preseason in summer, and we played them off the park," Cooke said. "And the next game after that, we were shocking. Just a lack of consistency. One week we'll be world-beaters, and the next game we can be very amateurish. It's very frustrating. It's my fourth season here, and every year it's the same. It's just up and down."
The midsummer slide marked the end of Clavijo's tenure, with Gary Smith stepping in as interim coach, playing to a 5-4-2 record over the final third of the season and lifting the squad's hopes for a future they can't wait to embrace.
"To be perfectly honest, the side was playing extremely well when Fernando left," Smith said at season's end. "They were very creative. We just couldn't finish. I mean the statistics in some of the games were phenomenal."
Despite finishing strong and bringing a sense of consistency to the Rapids ever-evolving attack, Smith remains unsatisfied with the gains made during his 11 games leading the club from the sidelines. He is quick to point out that to improve on the potential unleashed in the Rapids' dramatic stretch run he must address the need to score goals, tweaking the team by pursuing a reliable offensive force who can follow through on the threat to hit the net.
"Trying to add somebody who's maybe a touch more prolific with a little bit more pedigree would certainly be at the top of the list," Smith said, addressing the team's priorities as it entered a prolonged offseason. "We've fallen foul of not being able to score enough. To add somebody would be great."
Smith came to the Rapids as a representative of the fabled Arsenal FC in the English Premiership, and he is approaching his first full season as Colorado's head coach with a sensibility steeped in the competitive tradition of European football, setting his sights higher than the self-imposed limitations often adopted by MLS veterans.
"When you look around, if somebody's been producing season after season, and they're scoring 15-20 goals a season regularly, I think you can safely say that they've got pedigree and warrant maybe a bigger fee or more wages," Smith said. "They've got some foundation to what they're asking for. You can almost guarantee you're buying those goals in. That's what many of the top European teams are looking at. 'There's 20 goals definitely. If we put somebody alongside him who can score 15, we've got 35 goals. Where does that get us straightaway?' You can't ever legislate for injuries and ill form, but if they've produced over a period of time, you can normally count on that."
Never mind the fact that only three MLS players scored as many as 15 goals in 2008, and that the Rapids scored a total of 44 goals. If Smith can find them another 20-35 goals, the Rapids will take them, and if they need to play a handful of postseason games to make room for all those goals, there'll be no looking back.
But despite the need to add to the attack with a proven goal-scorer, Smith shares the feeling of his predecessor that many of Colorado's needs can be found within the club.
"We have some good young players, and the majority of them have been given a terrific opportunity very quickly," Smith said. "Look at Kosuke Kimura and Jordan Harvey. Nick LaBrocca will be one of the outstanding individuals of the season. Colin Clark, Omar Cummings - these are all lads that have come through the reserve process on this club. It's certainly an organization that is going to give young players a good opportunity to prove their worth.
"There's a huge amount of potential, not just within the team, but within the club. I hope that we can add to that. Getting the right balance and maybe adding a goal-scorer would certainly be upper most in my mind at the moment, but we've got some good development players that maybe next year, maybe towards the end of next year, might be showing that there's something there for them."
Regardless of how he is remembered by fans and players, central to Clavijo's legacy will be his efforts to build the team he handed over to Smith, completely shaping the Rapids squad over the course of his coaching stint in Colorado. As he completed his run with the Rapids, Clavijo had no regrets about the players he recruited and their prospect of returning to playoff soccer.
"Everyone on that team, I brought them in," Clavijo acknowledged after his departure in August. "I'm extremely proud of them. And when I look at what I got when I came to the team, and what we've done and where the team is today, I think we've done a very good job with the tools that I was given to work with.
"They have the team, there is no question about it," Clavijo added, confident the Rapids could still make a bid for the 2008 MLS Cup Playoffs despite dwelling in the cellar when he left them. "The team is good. The team is strong. Hopefully, they find the net."
Along with the team Smith inherited from Clavijo, he benefited from a dramatically improved back line. Veteran defenders Mike Petke and Cory Gibbs made their season debuts in the Kansas City victory, with Petke returning from an injury that cost him the first 19 games of the season and with Gibbs joining the Rapids and sharing center back duties with Petke after Ugo Ihemelu suffered a concussion against Columbus.
"I was fortunate that at the time when I was asked to take the reins, we added Cory Gibbs, and Mike came back from injury," Smith said. "Those were experienced individuals who produced at the highest level. I don't think there was ever going to be a case where Mike or Cory was going to get flustered or too nervous about the game they were going into."
The final line of defense - goalkeeper - remains something of a question for the Rapids, with Bouna Coundoul suffering a lapse in performance midseason and Preston Burpo taking the starting duties between the posts for nine games before Coundoul returned to start the final two.
"Bouna's an extremely talented, young, and exciting goalkeeper, and in Preston we have an experienced level-headed professional who works extremely hard," Smith said. "I'd like to think, number one, they're both around. I know Bouna's out of contract. We're trying ever so hard to make Bouna a signing for next year. I really do believe the future's extremely bright for Bouna, but I'd certainly like to have him here for a little while longer."
A big part of the Rapids late-season resurgence was their ability to win on the road, taking critical victories from New York, Dallas, and Chivas after having won only once away from home in the season's first 22 games.
Ultimately, however, for the Rapids to have success in the future they have to build a home-field dominance that has so far eluded them two years into their new state-of-the-art soccer stadium.
"Especially in this league, not many teams like to travel," Cooke said. "The distance is a lot different than playing in Europe. The teams don't travel well, and it's important you have a good home record. It's crucial, especially being at altitude and where we are on the geographical map. You've got to make this a fortress, and sometimes we don't do that. We let teams in and teams get their confidence up."
Essential to that equation was building back Colorado's own sense of confidence. That was Smith's central mission in taking over a talented team at the bottom of its conference in August, and his aim was accomplished beyond any expectations, elevating his players, infusing a competitive atmosphere into practices, and creating a culture change in the clubhouse.
"Confidence was very low, and the first task was to galvanize the group and give them a little more belief in their play," Smith said. "We did work a tad harder on the training field at just making sure that we were difficult to break down, and the individuals knew where they should be and what their role was within that group. It's a matter of really working extremely hard day in and day out on those things to be more consistent. I thought we started to show that to a degree. Sadly we ran out of time."
The strengthened squad and Smikth's impact on the them - both immediate and enduring over the final three months of the season - sent a strong signal to team captain Pablo Mastroeni, who despite retrospectively describing himself as "gone" from Colorado when the Rapids were floundering in midsummer, felt encouraged enough to sign a contract extension when Smith was given a three-year contract as head coach at the end of the season.
"There's a lot of great things to build on, a lot of great young players that stepped up this year, and there's a lot of positives going on in this club," Mastroeni said. "That's what's disheartening. Playoffs come and go. I've yet to win a championship, and the likelihood of me winning one in my career - it's eluded me up to this point. But that's not the disheartening part. The disheartening part is coming to work every day, enjoying what you do everyday, being in the locker room with 28 guys that you really enjoy everyday, putting a result out, putting an effort out in the last game when you have to win, doing that for 89 minutes and then coming up short. That for me is the kick in the [gut]."
It was a kick that Mastroeni was quick to recover from, determined to take that feeling of heartbreak at season's end, build on the positive, and rediscover the glory of winning in '09.
"Gary brought to the team a profound love for the sport again," Mastroeni said, explaining the transformation the team went under with the coaching change. "[He created] an environment that was competitive every day, where people challenged for spots in a realistic way, where age, where your resume was thrown out the window, and the guy that deserved the spot got the nod for the weekend. It was an environment where I got in my car every morning and I'd think about the training session, I'd think about what I needed to do. I thought, 'I want to be the best player in training session today.' Those are feelings I haven't had in many, many years."
It's a feeling the Rapids expect to run rampant through the team as they recalibrate their sights on a successful campaign to return to the playoffs and capture their first MLS Cup next season.
"We've done what we need to do to set a course that we wanted to set," managing director Jeffrey Plush said as he opened the offseason by hiring Smith as head coach and extending Mastroeni's contract. "We are excited about 2009. I wish we could show it tomorrow on the pitch somewhere."
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