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Smooth sailing eludes Rapids
By Will Kuhns, Soccer America Colorado's surprise 1997 MLS Cup appearance proved an aberration: The club's futile quest for consistency has plagued it throughout its first five seasons. The metaphor is too obvious. A constant flow of fresh faces, tumultuous lows and wildly exciting highs separated by stretches of stagnation. It sounds like watching rafters on a white-water river, yet it aptly describes the first five years of the Colorado Rapids. The team has never finished higher than fifth in the league regular-season standings but is one of just five teams to play in an MLS Cup final. Only Marcelo Balboa has remained on board through it all. Despite the stark fluctuations in the team's brief history, Balboa has noticed several recurring themes that have defined his club so far: the annual turnover of players, the lack of a true playmaker and the propensity for streaks. FRESH FACES. The dam retaining Rapids' players burst right away. Englishman Bobby Houghton, the team's first coach, knew far less about American players than his colleagues and the initial MLS drafts exposed that void. Colorado selected 20 players to complement five allocations. By the start of Year 2, 13 of those players had been cut. Houghton had resigned when the Rapids failed to make the playoffs and after the team finished last among the 10 teams, Glenn "Mooch" Myernick was named coach.
During the 1997 season, four more first-year picks were cut and three of the original allocations were traded. "The team basically got rid of 16 players and all of those assets were lost for nothing," said Rapids general manager Dan Counce, who was hired after Year 1. "We had no chance to recoup any value because we had players nobody wanted." The trend of transience continued throughout Myernick's four-year tenure. Some players were waived. Several foreigners failed to pan out. And a spate of injuries disheveled the team in 2000. More telling than the fact that Balboa is the only original Rapid is that he is one of just nine players in team history to start 60 or more games. "We've made so many changes over the years," Balboa said. "It's hard to get a chemistry going. Always seems every year we start off with five or six new players ... it's tough to just throw everybody together in preseason and say, 'OK, you guys jell and we'll play the season.'" HOLE IN THE MIDDLE. The position on the Rapid's roster that has seen the most experimentation is attacking center midfield. The inaugural season never called for a playmaker. Houghton's over-the-top attacking style focused on forwards Jean Harbor and Shaun Bartlett and virtually bypassed the midfield. Mexican David Patino, in 1997, was the closest the team has come to filling the role and he helped take the team to the MLS Cup final, but he left after one season. The past three seasons have been a matter of creativity by committee, with Balboa and forward Paul Bravo altering their games to try and shoulder the load at times. "There's no way in hell I'm a playmaker," Balboa said. "I can make a pass, but I'm a guy in the middle of the park that will tackle, that will win balls. ... Every team needs a playmaker and I think that's been our downfall. We've never had a straight-out playmaker." Swede Anders Limpar served the ball superbly, but injuries limited him to 36 appearances in two seasons. Limpar also preferred to do his work from the flanks. Without that midfield general to give purpose and direction to the Rapids' ball possession, the offense has sputtered. Talented forwards have come and gone -- Harbor, Bartlett, Wolde Harris, Jorge Dely Valdes -- but none has scored more than 13 goals in a season and no Colorado player has ranked higher than 10th in league scoring. "We kind of go back and forth," Balboa said. "One year we have an offense and that year we don't have a defense. The next year we have a good defense and we have no offense." AN AIRPORT SHOWDOWN. Looking back on his team's various hot and cold spells, Balboa notes key events that seemed to trigger them. The 1997 season was turning sour and a playoff berth was slipping from the Rapids' grasp when their sixth straight loss -- a 5-2 bashing in Kansas City -- brought things to a boil. "The sad part was it happened at the airport," Balboa said. "We had a blow-up, the coaches and players ... for some reason that turned things around. People just started going." Colorado won its final regular season game at San Jose and went on a playoff tear, sweeping Kansas City and Dallas before falling to D.C. United 2-1 in the MLS Cup. "It just seemed we kept getting more and more confident as we played," Balboa said. "We had nothing to lose. We were the last seed and who knows if people took us seriously or not. But any way you can get to a final, you take it." The Rapids entered the 1999 All-Star break with a 12-4 record -- the best in MLS at the time. Myernick was named coach of the Western Conference All-Stars, but only three of his players were selected. Other teams with poorer records had four or five representatives. "That was a point where things turned in a negative way for us," Balboa said. "There were players on our team that felt they should have been All-Stars." Colorado scored just eight goals the rest of the season and endured a 679-minute drought without a goal. "We seem to go on the wrong streaks at the wrong times," Balboa said. "It seems like every year, at one point in the season, we go through that -- we can't score a goal, we're missing easy ones and it's tough on a team." One streak Balboa hopes to continue, however, is the team's four straight playoff appearances. Last year, Bravo's overtime goal in the regular season finale against Los Angeles extended Colorado's season. "Credit all the players who have been with the Rapids because somehow, we always seem find a way -- even if it's the last playoff spot on the last day of the regular season," Balboa said. Will Kuhns is an associate editor at Soccer America magazine.
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