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The Colorado Rapids’ 2023 season was a 34-game slog that offered little hope for the future: The team’s five wins were tied for the fewest in the club’s nearly 30-year history, and it finished in last place in MLS’ Western Conference. The Rapids’ supporters’ group issued a statement calling out the club’s ownership, Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, for a lack of investment and treating the franchise as “nothing more than an afterthought.”
One year later, the outlook is decidedly rosier. Under new head coach Chris Armas, the Rapids tripled their win total from last season and are in the MLS Cup playoffs for the first time in three years. Although the club’s roster was upgraded—with standouts like midfielder Djordje Mihailovic, defender Sam Vines, and goalkeeper Zack Steffen coming aboard—much of the improvement is being credited to Armas, a veteran who came to Colorado after three years as an assistant in the English Premier League with Manchester United and Leeds United. He brought a pressing, more aggressive style of play that helped the long-suffering Rapids more than double their goal output from 2023. For his handiwork, Armas, whose 15 wins are a club record for a first-year head coach, has been named a finalist for the MLS Coach of the Year award.
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After dropping their first match of a best-of-three series to the LA Galaxy this past Saturday, the Rapids are returning home to Dick’s Sporting Goods Park on Friday, November 1, looking to avoid elimination. Ahead of that matchup, we spoke with Armas about his career, his Rapids squad, and what has led to the club’s, well, rapid turnaround.
Editor’s note: The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
5280: You’ve said before that you like working with hungry people. As you were in the process of evaluating the job with the Rapids, what gave you the sense there was a hunger here in Colorado?
Chris Armas: When I went through the interview process, part of that is going through the roster and understanding what they have—understanding if there’s alignment from the president and sporting director and if they saw it in a similar way, in terms of what changes needed to be made and which players potentially we could think about moving on from and the type of profiles we could think about adding. When I went through the interview process, we were aligned in many ways with the direction of the roster. That gave me a big indication that this could be a good situation for me.
How would you describe your coaching style and philosophy? And how do you think your players would describe it?
I think my players would describe me as a players’ coach. I was once a player. I can put myself in their shoes. I’m a guy that makes it a point to get to know the individual, the human being behind the athlete. Once I understand who that person is, I have a good chance of doing my job, which is to get the most out of each guy.
In terms of coaching style and leadership style, I’m a detail-oriented, hard-working, tactical manager. In terms of style of play, everything we do around here revolves around intensity. We like to play proactive football that revolves around verticality—playing forward, running forward. It feels very energetic to play this way. Defensively, the intensity comes from pressing and counterpressing, meaning strong reactions when we lose the ball to win it back quickly. In order to do that, you need players that are energetic, players that are willing to do that work, players that are open to this type of intensive football.
What did you learn or pick up from your time coaching in the Premier League?
First and foremost, I learned from [Manchester United interim manager] Ralf Rangnick. I learned a lot about his leadership style, some of his specific tactics in the game, how he managed players and big personalities, and how he managed the English media. I learned a lot from the Premier League. You get to see what other teams at a high, high level are doing, based on the high-level coaches that they have, the way they behave with the ball and without the ball.
I would also say I learned from the players. A lot of the players on that team…when you watch Cristiano Ronaldo, and guys like Juan Mata, Victor Lindelöf, Harry Maguire, Marcus Rashford, and Bruno Fernandes, you can learn a lot from those players. You learn from coaching top talent and big personalities and seeing the level at which their brains work and how they can take in information, process it and make decisions and act.
When you first got to Colorado and started to work with this team, what encouraged you the most about what they could potentially accomplish?
I genuinely got the sense that this group was open to embracing a real team-first approach, where you think about the next guy. You have a lot of guys here who would run for the next guy, who would commit to the next guy. There were a lot of givers, not takers. Part of it is that we’re young, but part of it is that we have the right young players. Early on, that gave me a lot of hope.
I could see right away in the training sessions that they were trying so hard to deliver what I was asking. There was a big effort from the group to get on board, take in information, and try to apply it. I could see it was a really attentive group and hungry for the style of play I was looking to implement.
Given the team’s struggles last season and some of the public pleas from fans to ownership, how much has this role had to go beyond coaching, where you’ve had to deal with building trust with a fan base?
I had to be very deliberate to set certain expectations with the fan base and to connect with the fan base. It was important for me to get in front of them, even though I knew some—and many—might not have been happy with the hire. I had to lay out a vision to them. I had to let them see who I am and how I was thinking about coaching the team and what they could expect, but also, it was important to ask them what they wanted in terms of the team. What was most important to them? I found that out early on: They wanted a team that never quit, that would never give in, that was gritty, that played an attacking brand of football and that also acknowledged them. They wanted the team to show appreciation. I made sure that continues to happen to this day.
Every chance I’ve had to get in front of the fans, I’ve taken it. I’ve always put myself out there, whether it’s an appearance at a pub, whether it’s after the game—–win, lose, or draw, home and away—to go over and spend some time with the fans. At my very first press conference, a few of the heads of the supporters’ group were in the room. I made sure I knew their names and made sure I said hello to them and just asked them to give me a chance.
In your first season here, what, if anything, has surprised you?
I would say probably two things. One, what the games in Colorado look like. I’ve been here as a player and coach, and seeing the effect that altitude can have physically on opposition, and even psychologically—that’s been something really cool to see, with the way our guys who live at altitude can run, and overwhelm, in our building. Our group can just run and repeat that. The other thing is just how humble all the players and staff around me are. It’s rare in sports at a high level where you see that many people willing to get on board and pull in the same direction and give to the team the way my group does.
If we’re talking at this point a year from now, where do you want the club to be—and where do you believe it can be, based on how things have gone so far?
I want to be in the same exact spot next year—in a place where we’re competing for trophies. That we’re back in the playoffs next year and we feel even more prepared next year than we do this year. We feel good now, but everything we do, it’s more programmed, it’s more in our DNA—so everything that we’re doing, we’re just more of a well-oiled machine a year later.
