Clavijo Looks At Rapids Upcoming Season

Soccer 365 has a nice interview with Colorado Rapids head coach Fernando Clavijo. It's good to see Clavijo again stating where his goals for the team lie :

“I’ve been saying all along it would take 3 years to put a group of players together and this is 3 years, so no excuses. Everything is falling into place and you have to believe that this is our time.”

With the MLS having a salary cap and the league's office slowing adding transparency to the player acquisition process, clubs in smaller markets should be aiming for winning it all. The question is do the Rapids really have the talent to do so? A lot has been made over the loss Joe Cannon. Zach Thornton, 33, is perceived as being at the near end of his career. The defense, tied for the worst in the league last year, has been shaken up with some new veterans (Vanney, Prideaux) brought in along with the talented Ugo Ihemelu. Clavijo will need to find a way to get all those new faces in the back to gel if the team is to make a run. More so, they need to start scoring goals. Hercules Gomez may be able to be the 15 goal scorer the team needs if he can find ways to latch on to Terry Cooke's crosses. But as we saw last year with Cunningham at Real Salt Lake, it'll take more than that. And as well as Beckerman and Mastroeni may play together in the middle, the Rapids will likely need one of their under performing vets like Mathis or Kirovski to step and show they can still play and produce some magic if the team is going to have a serious chance of winning a trophy.