Colorado Rapids test contender credentials against Inter Miami | OneFootball

By Charles Boehm

Though it’s only mid-April, it feels safe to say the Colorado Rapids took part in one of the wildest games of the year when they visited Toronto FC on April 4.

This one had it all: five goals, three red cards, seven yellows, 30 fouls, two lead changes, a goalkeeping howler or two, and an 85th-minute comeback winner for the Reds via their new record signing Josh Sargent.

Ninety-plus minutes like that inevitably provide myriad data points for any manager. The data point at the top of the list for Matt Wells, though, might turn heads across Denver and beyond.

“I said to the guys in the debrief: I learned that we can win MLS Cup,” said the Rapids’ first-year head coach, who at 37 is the second-youngest manager in the league, in a recent one-on-one conversation with MLSsoccer.com ahead of Saturday's high-profile visit from Lionel Messi and Inter Miami CF (4:30 pm ET | Apple TV).

Match Trailer | Colorado Rapids welcome Lionel Messi & Inter Miami

Colorado would finish with only nine men on the BMO Field pitch, and fell 3-2 after blowing a 2-0 lead gained while playing 10 vs. 11. That last part is what their boss takes such heart from, as his young side executed his high-energy, press-and-possess game model with dazzling aplomb.

“How we played 10 v 11,” he continued, “when I see us play with that personality, that identity, still building up from the back, still finding the free man, even though there isn't one on the pitch, our use of [goalkeeper] Zack Steffen in the buildup, making them jump – the bravery we played with…

“We were the better team until halftime, then from halftime until we went 2-0 up, we were incredible. So that was the first moment I've looked at us and thought, we're genuinely contenders here for the whole thing.”

Miami challenge

If you subscribe to the old saying, widely attributed to iconic wrestler Ric Flair, that to be the best you’ve got to beat the best, the Rapids have an ideal opportunity to state their contender credentials this weekend.

Rather than their usual hunting ground of Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, Colorado welcome defending MLS Cup presented by Audi champions Inter Miami to their NFL-sized former home Empower Field at Mile High on Saturday night, a special commemoration of the 30th anniversary of their inaugural home match, with a bumper crowd expected to pack into the Denver Broncos’ venue to celebrate their team and get a glimpse of Miami’s star-studded squad.

It’s the start of a massive stretch for the Mile High Club in which they’re playing arguably the three best sides in MLS. They’ve certainly done their part to build momentum, rebounding from the Toronto insanity with a 6-2 smashing of Houston Dynamo FC and a 1-0 midweek US Open Cup win over Union Omaha, one of the top clubs in USL League One.

“I can't lie, I'm very excited for that game,” Wells said of the visit from Messi’s Herons, speaking before the rout of the Dynamo. “I want to make sure that we do the business before that game, because after that game, we have LAFC in midweek away, then we go to Vancouver away on that weekend, so it's some seven days that we've got on the schedule.

“But we're in the wrong building if that does anything but excite us,” he added. “What an occasion: The anniversary, huge crowd, playing at that stadium … But my mindset, that means nothing unless we put on a show against them and get the three points, that's all. That's all I'm focused on.”

Messi mania

An obsessive planner and tactics nerd who recently described to Backheeled.com how he’s installed a sort of play-calling system comparable to gridiron football to guide the Rapids’ buildouts on some goal kicks, Wells tends to immerse himself in the preparation process from match to match. That rarely allows him to look ahead more than a few days at a time during the season.

So he admits to being surprised at how early and often he’s been asked about Saturday’s fixture, which inevitably accrues extra mainstream cachet thanks to Messi’s celebrity.

“Even from England, you could tell how big he's been for MLS,” said Wells of the Argentine icon, “and then probably coming here, you start to see – I probably did underestimate the magnitude of the impact he's had. Even when I arrived in December, people were asking me about this game coming up, which, to me, was madness.

“When you're a head coach, you live in the moment … So to arrive in December and have people saying, ‘Are you so excited about Messi coming to town in April?’ It did catch me a little bit off guard, but it's brilliant.”

Building an identity

As is often the case with young groups, Colorado have shown a Jekyll-and-Hyde tendency towards excellence at home and something less awe-inspiring on their travels. They’re a perfect 4W-0L-0D at DSGP across all competitions, in the process scoring 13 goals – they’re currently tied with the Whitecaps for most goals in MLS, with 19 – and 1W-3L-0D away.

The losses have been instructive for Wells, revealing both a high ceiling and a low floor as he installs an intricate possession structure and an aggressive pressing ethos against the ball. A season-opening loss at Seattle was a cold splash of reality, albeit one that he says taught his players a key takeaway much more efficiently than he and his staff could impart it on the training ground.

“If we go somewhere and we don't play with our courage and our identity, then we're going to look like an average team,” Wells noted. “Because against Seattle, we played out from the back, but we played out because the coach wanted them to play out. They didn't play out because they truly believed in it as a tactic and believed in why we do it and everything we practiced from preseason.

“So you're playing out, but you're not making the right movements, you're not sharp with the ball, you're not risking the forward pass. Everyone's a bit tentative and hesitant. So it’s the best lesson ever, way better than I could ever coach them, that guys, the evidence is there. There's no point doing that, because every game will feel like the Seattle game.’ So we then boxed that off, and since then, every game we've arrived in, we've played with the right courage, personality, trying to dominate the game.”

If their work to attain a two-goal lead while shorthanded against TFC showed Wells a potential to win titles, their display after their opponents were also reduced to 10 men revealed to him how quickly things can go pear-shaped.

“How we played after 2-0 taught me we've got a long way to go before it’s a real, genuine identity that just survives every moment of a football match,” he explained. “But that, coupled with how we've been on a steady trajectory since Seattle, I'm very pleased with what I'm seeing.”

Championship mindset

With a reputation as an emerging managerial talent honed in stints as an assistant to the likes of Ange Postecoglou and Scott Parker at English Premier League sides Tottenham Hotspur, Fulham and AFC Bournemouth, Wells had ample options for his first job as a No. 1. Rather than dive into the pressure cooker of the English Championship, he chose Colorado for the opportunity to build something lasting, and experience the unique aspects of the MLS landscape.

That teacher’s mentality is apparent in his early days on the Front Range. He says one of his biggest challenges has not been drilling his concepts into the players, so much as making them believe they can execute it all at a truly elite level.

“I felt the buy-in from very early, like in terms of the football – from day one, really,” he said. “All the concepts I'm throwing at the guys about the close connections, the short passes, attracting the pressure before you pass – some new stuff to them, and give them credit: They're unbelievably obedient, for want of a better phrase, and they really try their best to put everything into practice.

“The bit that was missing throughout preseason [which] was frustrating is, I just don't feel like I'm convincing them that they're good enough to dominate every game and they're good enough to win the MLS Cup.”

What helped drive his message home at timely moments: A resounding preseason win over Orlando City, who at the time were a perennial Audi MLS Cup Playoffs contender rather the leaky strugglers they’ve since resembled, and a couple of presentations to the team in which Wells utilized analytics data to underline to his squad that “we're a top-five team in pretty much every metric” in the league.

And he sees major room to grow, particularly on the defensive side, where he’s made pragmatic concessions to keep from dropping points early on.

“You can tell we're going to be a good buildup team. Sometimes we're very good, sometimes it doesn't quite work, but it's the product that I want to see on the pitch,” said Wells. “Whereas the pressing is the only one where we're nowhere near the pressing machine that we will be in the second half of this season. And part of that is me prioritizing a lot of the training around the in-possession aspects, and then also designing defensive game plans that have protected our back line a little bit more than what I would like to.

“I'd like to press a lot more man-man, a lot more higher up the pitch. But early on in preseason, when we were doing that, I just felt we paid a price with results. So it's a good challenge for me.”

Opportunity knocks

Despite the star above their crest from their 2010 MLS Cup triumph, Colorado are not widely ranked among the league’s elite. They’ve missed out on the playoffs in six of the last nine seasons, and haven’t won a postseason match in a decade.

Can Wells turn this Rapids side with plenty of talent, but no established superstars into a legit contender in his first year at the helm?

We’ll learn a lot more about that on Saturday afternoon.

“We just got to keep working,” he said. “At every juncture, there's something new to reaffirm the belief.”