At least four candidates for Rapids’ coaching job
The Rapids have contacted at least four attack-minded coaches to replace Pablo Mastroeni.
A league source told The Denver Post that the Rapids have made contact with former Venezuela national team coach César Farías, former Norwegian national team player and Blackburn Rovers manager Henning Berg, Stanford University coach Jeremy Gunn and Columbus Crew SC assistant coach Josh Wolff.
The Rapids would not confirm whether they had been in contact with the four candidates, but they did issue a statement.
“It’s a comprehensive global search,” Rapids spokesman Ryan Madden said in a statement. “Out of respect for the process, we don’t feel it would be appropriate to speak publicly about individual candidates, but what we can tell you is that the club has been in contact with a number of highlyqualified professionals from Europe, South America and Oceania, as well as here in the United States at both the professional and collegiate level.”
The Rapids fired former coach Mastroeni on Aug. 15 and replaced him with interim coach Steve Cooke. The Rapids are 1-4-1 under Cooke, and Madden said the interim coach is still a candidate for the position. He added that the club has received more than 100 inquiries about the opening. The Rapids, he said, are also proactively searching for the right candidate and are using an outside analytics firm to find candidates who have had success playing the attacking brand of soccer they aspire to play.
Madden said the Rapids plan to pare their list of candidates to a handful of finalists in the coming weeks and hope to have a new hire in place by the beginning of No- vember.
“The ultimate goal for the club is to bring someone in on a long-term basis that shares our vision for the future,” Madden said.
That vision — to play a more attack-minded style of soccer — was outlined recently in an op-ed in The Denver Post by Rapids interim general manager Padraig Smith and chief business officer Wayne Brant.
“I think if you’re a Rapids fan right now, it’s an exciting time,” Madden said. “The future is bright.”