The Colorado Rapids know they’ll face an uphill battle in their CONCACAF Champions League Round of 16 series against Toronto FC, but they aren’t letting steep odds dampen their enthusiasm for the competition.
Colorado will enter next year’s series as a heavy underdog against Toronto, who became the first club in MLS history to win a domestic treble by claiming MLS Cup, the Supporters’ Shield and the Canadian Championship in 2017. The Rapids fell on the opposite end of the league spectrum, following up their surprising 2016 with a disappointing 2017 campaign that saw the club axe former head coach Pablo Mastroeni and finish 20th in MLS.
“We’re excited as a club to be a part of this,” Rapids goalkeeper Tim Howard told MLSsoccer.com this week. “…We want to put the Colorado Rapids name on the marquee and we want to be recognized as one of the elite teams, and this is a competition we have an opportunity to do it in.”
Adding to the Rapids’ difficulty against Toronto is the serious change the club is experiencing this offseason. Colorado hired new head coach Anthony Hudson on Nov. 29, and are currently in the process of turning over their entire roster. They’ll have to integrate their new players and learn Hudson’s system quickly once preseason opens on Jan. 22 if they’re to have any chance against Toronto in late February.
Hudson does have some experience trying to quickly establish an identity with a team in his previous gig as manager of the New Zealand national team. He’ll apply some of the lessons he learned with the All-Whites to Colorado, sending his players videos and emails on tactics and expectations in the days leading up to the start of their first preseason camp in Casa Grande, Ariz.
“One of the things I learned as a result of not having a lot of time with my team in my last two jobs, really, is that you have to really think outside the box in terms of getting the message across and try to really give as much clarity to the players as possible in simple terms and as quickly as possible,” Hudson said. “And not just completely overload the players with information in terms of what we want, but just do it in the right way, right timing and get outside the box in terms of that.”
That plan comes as a bit of a comfort for the 38-year-old Howard, who, as the most experienced player on Colorado’s roster, plans to help the 36-year-old Hudson implement his vision on an abbreviated timeline ahead of the TFC series.
The former Manchester United and Everton 'keeper sounds like he’s on board.
“I’d heard some really good things, really great things about who he is as a manager, and I got to be honest, I’ve been around some top, top managers in my time and I was blown away by meeting him for the first time,” Howard said. “Listening to him speak and give some of his experiences and his thoughts on how he wants his teams to play tactically and what he expects of his teams, I was pleasantly surprised. At my age, I was like ‘I’ve seen it all, I’ve seen the good and the bad,’ and obviously I’m delighted to hear his ideas. It gave me more optimism and hope than I already had.”
Before he dives deep on tactics, however, Hudson is focused on filling out his roster. MLSsoccer.com reported on Wednesday that the club have signed left back Edgar Castillo pending a medical. The club traded Vancouver for New Zealand international Deklan Wynne on Thursday. More additions should soon be on the way, with Hudson saying that the team will bring in “quite a lot of players” with “two or three of those at least” set to be “key, strong” parts of the squad.
“I think the most important thing for me and the staff is the players, and that’s the thing I can’t get past right now,” he said. “I can’t get past recruitment, that’s where my total focus is now. We want to do well in recruitment. We want an incredibly strong preseason physically [and] tactically. We want the players that we lead into that first game in a really, really strong position and things need to happen for that to take place, but it’s certainly a competition that we want to do well in.”
