a 2-0 win over the Columbus Crew on April 23 and a 2-1 win over Chivas USA on May 14. While the Crew had managed a so-so start to the year, Chivas were a struggling expansion team; and both of those games were played in Denver.
"When you change so many players on a roster, in a team that mentally was not as strong as I would like it to be at the beginning, of course change affects results," Clavijo said. "I didn't expect it to go on as much as it did. But at the same time, I knew that the players we were bringing in, they were temperamental players, players with personality that would help, number one, mature this team and, number two, turn things around.
"It was a change for the better in the second part of the season. The change at the beginning was definitely a number one issue and one reason why the team did so poorly at the beginning."
For the first third of the season, the Rapids languished at the bottom of the Western Conference standings, along with Chivas USA and fellow expansion club Real Salt Lake. But with new striker Jeff Cunningham -- acquired from the Crew in the offseason -- beginning to find his scorer's touch and the club playing solid, defensive soccer, the side's fortunes began to turn.
If one looks for a specific turning point, the best place to start is the Rapids' June 15 match against the Los Angeles Galaxy at INVESCO Field at Mile High. Cunningham put home a penalty kick in the ninth minute to give the home side the lead, but defensive midfielder Pablo Mastroeni was sent off in the 18th minute and midfielder Guy Melamed met the same fate with half an hour to go. The Galaxy bombarded the Rapids' net, but 'keeper Joe Cannon once again starred in net and his teammates chipped in defensively to earn a remarkable 1-0 win.
Clavijo's charges slowly gathered steam heading into the All-Star break at the end of July, and when they got back on the field at the beginning of August, they took off. Only the San Jose Earthquakes had a better record after the All-Star break, as the Rapids lost just twice in the final third of the season. In the process, they closed the gap between themselves and the teams ahead of them in the table, eventually locking up the third seed in the Western Conference.
"It was a very slow start, but still the team was playing well," Clavijo said. "It gradually becomes wins. I think with one or two wins, not necessarily everybody starts believing, but also everybody's confidence is up. I think that was one of the main things that changed: not only knowing that we're going to win, but finding ways to win."
The dream finish -- an MLS Cup Championship -- never came true, as the Rapids fell to the Galaxy 2-0 at home in the Western Conference Championship after eliminating FC Dallas in a penalty kick shootout in the semifinal series, despite being a man down for more than an hour. But the way the club came on late in the year makes Clavijo think a title is not far off.
"It keeps me thinking we are close. Realistically, we need a couple more players. Realistically, we need a couple changes, and we are doing that in the offseason," Clavijo said. "We haven't stopped making deals yet. Do you know how hard it is to come out with the right players, the right situation, the right attitude of those players when they come here? I believe that we are maybe two or three [players away from] really being a contender for MLS Cup."
While Clavijo characterizes his first season in charge of the Rapids as "very positive," he admits that there were some things he did that didn't go over well in Denver. The early-season trades of local favorites Mark Chung and Chris Henderson were necessary to improve the team but meant two names synonymous with the Rapids franchise in recent years needed to leave town.
And Clavijo says he brought in too many players too late in the preseason. The need to evaluate a number of trialists, Clavijo said, prevented him from being able to prepare the team for the regular season, thus contributing to the club's slow start.
In the month and a half since the Rapids' season ended, Clavijo has been a busy man. He sent longtime Rapids defender Ritchie Kotschau to the Columbus Crew in exchange for striker Cornell Glen, and in the biggest deal of the offseason so far, traded Cunningham to Real Salt Lake for mercurial attacker Clint Mathis.
Despite a subpar season with RSL in 2005, Mathis is -- at the moment, anyway -- Clavijo's prize acquisition.
"You give up a goal scorer that does extremely well -- just your normal 100 percent goal scorer," he said. "But at the end of the day, you have to look at more than that. I think that Clint Mathis will help us overall in the performance of the team. He makes players around him better, and that's exactly what I'm looking for right now -- to get somebody else who's going to help me make the team better.
"Offensively, we are better, absolutely. No question," he added. "I don't expect Clint to score as many goals as Jeff did, but I do expect him to assist a lot more than Jeff did. Hopefully we'll surround him with better players and we'll help his performance."
In the deal with RSL, the Rapids also received financial considerations, thereby turning a 2006 first round draft pick -- the price for Cunningham last winter -- into one of the most talented players in MLS history and a sizeable amount of money to go out and sign more players. That is in addition to the allocation the Rapids received for Chung, who was traded to the Earthquakes in May.
Clavijo has already finished his overseas travels for the offseason, having visited Europe and South America in the past month to scout players. Now he's turning his attention to the college ranks and January's MLS SuperDraft.
"The scouting trip was superb. We saw some players in Argentina and Uruguay. We saw some players in Austria and Germany," said Clavijo. "And now we go back to the league to negotiate what needs to be done to hopefully bring these players in. This is the difficult part right now because our job is done. The difficult part is how you fit them in economically."
One player who won't be in the mix in 2006 is Alain Nkong. A talented playmaker, Nkong found himself in near constant discipline danger in 2005. He was sent off in the second leg of the Western Conference Semifinal Series against FCD and missed the Western Conference Championship due to the resulting suspension. Clavijo pointed at his absence as one of the main reasons the Rapids lost that match.
While Clavijo said he'd like to have Nkong back, he seems resigned to the fact that Nkong has played his last game for the Rapids.
"We're trying [to re-sign him]. The problem with Alain is in Europe. He's 25 years old, and he's going to play in the African [Nation's] Cup for Cameroon, and you know how that goes," Clavijo said. "Many of the European teams are over there. He's 25, but he's in the European community, so he doesn't count as a foreign player there. He's going to have plenty of opportunities, and we were lucky to have him for one year."
Jason Halpin is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
