Level Set 10, Colorado Rapids: Busted Clocks, Somehow Getting Less Reliable

Feel this really fits the theme.

What follows is a brief history of Colorado Rapids, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have. Their 2025 season gets weighed on both sides of that and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., before First Kick 2026. You should count on things happening between here and there.

The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...

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MLS’s highest franchise, the Colorado Rapids, have just two trophies (that aren’t the Rocky Mountain Cup) in their trophy case after 30 seasons in the league - and yet, they’re weirdly successful in the grand scheme of MLS History, at least according the janky little scale noted above. Turns out, giving the right time just twice a day is all it takes to make that happen. Consider the following: they won MLS Cup once (2010; a weird one due to the seeding process) and have felt the shameful sting of the Wooden Spoon exactly one time, way back the league’s first season (1996), but they also won their one and only U.S. Open Cup the season immediately after. Virtually all of that follows from coming out of backside of absolutely nowhere and doing something wild and weird – e.g., reaching the Western Conference final in 2016 and 2021 – with a little jumping out of the bushes to swipe the Western Conference title thrown in (2021 again). The “backside of nowhere” applies because Colorado whiffs entirely on post-season play more often than not – e.g., 12 times over the past 20 season. Still, those rare, great seasons gives the Rapids a certain kind of superpower: they scramble expectations for every other Western Conference team, if mostly during the regular season. Moreover, they pull off that magic trick on a shoestring budget - e.g., paying (the now-departed; more later) Djordje Mihailovic $3 million going into 2023, a record signing that held until they bumped the record to (maybe) $3.5 million for Rafael Navarro in the middle of 2024 (great deal so far). Their most famous players used to be goalkeepers – e.g., Tim Howard, Zac Steffen(?) - defenders – e.g., Marcelo Balboa, Drew Moor, – or defensive midfielders – e.g., Pablo Mastroeni. A couple dozen players could squeeze onto the very short list above if one wanted to go deeper (see Colorado’s (gently-outdated) all-time roster and build your own!), but the Rapids have often been a spine of a team waiting for attacking legs and arms to make them complete and dangerous enough to make one of those semifinals runs. The most famous example was the attacking duo of Omar Cummings and Conor Casey, who led them to MLS Cup 2010. The relative absence of famous names on the Rapids’ other two, post-2010 “glory teams” – i.e., the one that mounted the 2016 semifinal run (Shkelzen Gashi? Dillon Powers? Axel Sjoberg?) or 2021’s Western Conference-winning roster (Jack Price? Danny Wilson? The season that sold everyone on Lalas Abubakar before…yeah) – goes back to the point I’m making about the Rapids franchise overall: there is no way to see their next good season coming, but that season will abruptly become a major obstacle standing between your local team and a shot at glory.

Los Angeles Galaxy 1-1 Portland Timbers: So...What's to Be Done with the Wretch?

A wretch, in one extended universe.

In any other context, you’d pocket the Portland Timbers' 1-1 road draw at the Los Angeles Galaxy with a smile. In the context of a 2022 regular season in desperate need of a great, big goose on the bum, a little...more would have been nice.

I sat through the MLS in 15 to refresh my memory (and because I could; go on, girl, relive 1/6 of the pleasure & pain) and, apart from starting after two of the Galaxy’s early chances (22:41), they confirmed my overall impression of the game: about 90% of it happened between the defenses, a paucity of break-through moments, an afternoon of 20 gentlemen running aimlessly around a big field of green with two more standing in front of their goals, largely biding their time.

Still, Portland had their positives. Yimmi Chara made a cameo as the fastest man on the pitch with his blind-side run straight past LA’s Rayan Raveloson (who very visibly said, “fuck it,” after Yimmi bolted past), which gave Sebastian Blanco an easy diagonal for the assist. A bad touch from Yimmi could have pissed it all away, but he took an atypically soft and smart touch away from Derrick Williams (best player on field, fwiw) and slotted home near-post past Jonathan Bond. That one bright shining moment carried the Timbers to within two minutes (plus stoppage time) of bringing all three points back to Portland, and I’ll get to that, but let’s wrap up the positives.

Both Claudio Bravo and, especially, Josecarlos Van Rankin had solid games, and neither got sent off, so that’s a win. Timbers’ ‘keeper Aljaz Ivacic made a mix of good and lucky saves and generally looked comfortable back there (credit where it’s due, but I’d really like to see him yell more; I expect yelling from my ‘keepers)...and, yep, I just wrapped up the positives.

The Galaxy equalized, cruelly, almost immediately after the you-didn’t-know-you’d-miss-him-till-he’s-gone Felipe Mora made his 2022 season debut. When Dejan Joveljic gained a couple yards inside on Larrys Mabiala and finally placed a ball where Ivacic couldn’t reach and/or sit on it, LA clawed back two points they barely deserved, but anyone with eyes to see it and the stomach to stare disappointment in the face could see the Galaxy piling on those kinds of half-chance passes; neither team impressed with their xG numbers, but the little xG chart on The Mothership’s stats page matches what I remember. All it took was one Timbers defender switching off – i.e., Larrys didn’t seen Joveljic’s run till he was two yards past him – a tale as old as time. Especially for Portland.