Photo: Daniel Gajdamowicz

When MLS reached a deal with the player’s union on Wednesday night to avoid a work stoppage, it was time to quickly switch gears and preview this opening weekend.

Philadelphia starts the 2015 season on Saturday, at 4 pm, against the Colorado Rapids at PPL Park.

Last season, the Union drew 3-3 with Colorado in a wild affair that saw Philly concede two late goals after the 76th minute sending off of Mike Lahoud. Philadelphia responded well after that loss and challenged for a playoff spot, but the Rapids struggled immensely down the stretch and won just one of their remaining 16 games.

Both teams are coming into this season with renewed hopes and expectations, lead by a pair of managers who probably did not expect to be running their respective clubs in 2014. Jim Curtin and Pablo Mastroeni, both experienced former MLS players, now have full control of their rosters, with a vital year of experience under their belts.

PSP caught up with Rapids play-by-play announcer Richard Fleming ahead of this weekend’s season opener.

Philly Soccer Page: Alright, the labor talks are done, so it’s game on. Philadelphia versus Colorado this Saturday — give us your thoughts on this game and the Rapids’ offseason.

Richard Fleming: Well, the Rapids have never lost there. It’s a place where they’ve found success. But this is a Rapids side that still — you go back to July of 2014 — that’s still on a 14-game winless streak. But there are nine players, maybe ten players, that by the time Saturday comes around, it could be 11 (new) players actually, there are a couple on the verge, all of those players could put pen to paper. That’s almost an entire starting 11 on paper that the Rapids have switched around. So there have been massive transformations both on and off the field. They brought in a Director of Soccer in Claudio Lopez and a Sporting Director in Padraig Smith. They’ve got goalkeeper Zac MacMath, who obviously won’t be able to play this weekend because of the loan agreement, and there are a few Argentine players.

I think where they are looking and needing is at striker. You look at all of the other areas of the park, and they’ve got a new goalkeeper that brings competition to that area. You’ve got a number of new players along the backline. The starting defense this weekend could even be a completely new set of faces, four new names from 2014. Then you looking at the holding midfield of Sam Cronin, Marcelo Sarvas, and Lucas Pittinari, take two of those three. And then Juan Ramirez was brought in. So you’ve got a spine that’s strong defensively. What the Rapids need to bring in I think is someone who can get them 15 to 20 goals. Deshorn Brown over the last few seasons has been the leading striker with 10 goals. If you look at any of the leading sides that are successful and that are pushing to the playoffs, and deep into the playoffs, the players with 10 goals are your second or third leading scorer. They need someone to put the ball in the back of the net on a regular basis.

I think what we’re going to have from the Rapids this year is a much meaner team, and I mean that from a competitive standpoint. Physically, they’re going to be bigger. Literally you’ve got the potential of Bobby Burling and Axel Sjoberg starting on Saturday, and one is 6’5″ and the other is 6’7″. They’re a bigger and more physical side. The Rapids took to heart, I think some of the comments last year that they were nice guys on and off the field. They don’t want to be nice guys on the field so I think it’s going to be a much more competitive, meaner streak about these Rapids and I think they’re beginning to take the shape, a year in, of their head coach. It’s much more, ‘don’t concede, build from the back, be stronger defensively, and move forward as a unit’. They want to be stronger defensively and that’s something they’ve been working on in preseason. They were very fragile in that 14 game run, very brittle, particularly though the middle, and I think that really was quite difficult for someone like Pablo Mastroeni to stomach, considering the type of player he had been.

Richard Fleming calls Colorado’s games alongside former U.S. international defender Marcelo Balboa

PSP: Pablo Mastroeni was named head coach very late in the 2014 preseason. He was sort of thrown in there with no experience at all, and he didn’t have much time to prepare. What can we expect from him in season two?

Fleming: I think he needs people around him, which he’s got. He’s now got Brian Mullan, who retired at the end of last season. He’s going to be on the bench. I think Claudio Lopez is going to be in his ear. And then you’ve got Steve Cooke (assistant/academy) and Chris Sharpe (assistant/goalkeepers) who were there last year. Padraig Smith off the field helps with data and analytics. He’s got more of the support network, which I think every coach needs. They need weaponry at their disposal. I think he’s got that. I think he’s got ideas. He’s a great thinker. He’s a phenomenal thinker, a very deep thinker.

Last year there was a lot of internal anguish, a lot of internal analyzing and he was breaking down what he was doing right, what he was doing wrong. This year, one of the things he wants, and I’ve spoken to him about this, he wants consistency. He wants consistency in the lineup, a team that plays together, and a core of players that are used to playing next to each other.

One thing he has this year is depth, which he didn’t have last year. I think last year he learned a lot about players from a coaching perspective, if that makes sense. He knew a lot of the Rapids players as teammates, but he didn’t know them as players from a coaching standpoint. He can no longer be a leader on the field, so I think what he brought in, players like Sam Cronin, and Marcelo Sarvas, and Bobby Burling, and Michael Harrington, they’re leaders on the field. They’re the vocal leaders on the field that Pablo can’t be anymore. He wants three, four, five leaders on the field who are vocal, getting in the face of the opposition and also getting in the faces of their own teammates. He’s got the support around him this year, and that’s a massive step forward for him.

Rapids manager Pablo Mastroeni was thrown into the fire last season. This year, the former MLS Cup winner and World Cup veteran had a full preseason to work with his team. Photo: Earl Gardner

I think there’s a realization now about decisions that he makes mid-season. One of the keys last year was, when things were going well, and he’ll probably admit this, he had the chance to ‘strengthen’. The suggestion is that you strengthen from a position of strength. When the Rapids had a chance to add numbers mid-season, they were doing well. I think they were third in the west, just a couple of points off second, and everything was going smoothly. No injuries really, only Vicente Sanchez had picked up a bit of a knock. It’s all about decisions at key points of the season and I think he’ll look back to that moment where, weeks of the transfer window closing, everybody fell like flies. Drew Moor went, Shane O’Neill went, Jared Watts went down and Jose Mari was in and out of the side, Sanchez was in and out of the side, then they had a bit of a wobble in the goalkeeping department. So I think the second half of the season was a bigger learning curve for him.

There were probably so many elements that Pablo learned last year. As we all know, he was thrown into the deep end, fresh from being a player, fresh from being a leader on the field. He hadn’t coached for a single moment, then, all of a sudden, he’s got this team and he’s got to lead a team that started well before the wheels started coming off around him. There was a lack of depth in the squad. He’s made strides to (fix that).

People will look at the Rapids and think, ‘well, they’ve got a hell of a lot of defenders’. I think that’s a reaction to not wanting to be found without depth in that key department. When Drew Moor and Shane O’Neill went down, that’s when the Rapids started to have their problems, because they were starting to have to put square pegs in round holes. Players were out of position. Marvell Wynne was a classic right back or full back, and he was dragged into the center he was exposed quite a bit.

So getting depth, getting the right people around him, that was (important). It’s also about key moments in the season, when to push, when to hold back, all of that just comes with experience. But he went through an offseason where he analyzed, and he thought, he over-thought, and he thought again, and he’s going to be thinking all the way through this season. That’s the kind of character he is. He works long into the night. Even during the preseason camps, when they were in Tucson, he put together some coaching videos to show the guys, just at lunch time. He was up until 1 am putting together these videos, just to show the guys going into a preseason game. He prepares to the “nth” degree. He’s really working at this new role of being a head coach.

But having Brian Mullan alongside, and Claudio Lopez, they’re guys who were in the trenches together as players on that 2010 MLS Cup team. Drew Moor is the only remaining active player from that team. He’s got people around him who know how to win, and know what it takes to win. They know what it was like in that locker room during that successful period. That’s key for him, to add like-minded characters. Time will tell. He’s now hitting that second season and he’s shaping the side in the way he wants. This will be a more telling year than 2014.

Philadelphia settled for a 3-3 draw against Colorado last season. Mike Lahoud was sent off in the 75th minute, and the Union conceded two goals in the following 10 minutes. Photo: Daniel Gajdamowicz

PSP: Colorado and Philly really aren’t that different. Both teams have some solid players and a decent core. You’re not going to find superstars like Robbie Keane or Clint Dempsey, but the Union and the Rapids have generally been competitive in recent years. Is it fair to say that this is a pretty even matchup on Saturday?

Fleming: Yea, absolutely, and I think there’s an expectation for both coaches. I think Jim Curtin is in a similar position. There’s hunger, there’s expectation in that second season, there are changes in the offseason. I think these two teams are balanced, and you just have to look at the results over recent times and there’s not been a great deal in it. There was a stroke of luck for the Rapids and a bit of misfortune for the Union last year that turned that game around and ended in a 3-3 tie. The Union should have walked away with all three points if not for the sending off of Mike Lahoud. That resulted in the penalty, then there was the late goal from Deshorn Brown.

These are two sides, where the players will tell you, you don’t win MLS Cup on the opening day of the season. Jared Watts said to me, “You don’t want to be the best team necessarily on the first day of the season, but you want to use that as a launchpad to become the best team as the season progresses.”

I asked Pablo, considering you’re still 14 games without a win, what would be your ideal outcome this weekend, would you settle for a draw or go for a win? He said, “I want a good performance.” That’s how he thinks, he doesn’t give you a straight answer. He said, “Look, if we have a great performance, then the result will be the product of the performance.”

I think these are two evenly matched sides, in two conferences that are now very competitive, highly competitive. The suggestion is, would these sides sneak into 5th or 6th place? I think that would be the expectation, to get into the playoffs, having both missed out in 2014. Reach the playoffs, then see what you can do.

Looking at the Rapids’ record on opening day, it’s poor. They are 5-11-3 in their season-opening fixtures in the 19 previous seasons. They’ve only won one of those on the road in that time, and that was at Chivas in 2010. So they’re not good starters. But they had a very intense preseason, they had a training camp in San Diego, then a couple of games in Vegas and Tucson. They played Sporting KC, FC Tucson, and then Real Salt Lake. The suggestion is that they’re aiming to be one of the fittest sides. They’ve really worked on that. A number of players like Marc Burch, Vicente Sanchez, and Gabby Torres have come back fitter than they were last year. Drew Moor is still not 100 percent, he’s probably six, seven, or eight weeks away.

You look at the standings and everyone is on zero points. Everyone has high expectations, but we’ll find out on Saturday and the coming weeks how good the preseason has been and how those acquisitions have been, and how quickly this side is bearing down and jelling together. Michael Harrington said to me that they have jelled well, but that they’re not quite ‘there’. They’ve not quite ironed out all of the creases but they will get better.

It’s going to be intriguing because there’s been a massive overhaul for the Rapids during the offseason. I think they’ll really stand on what happened during the second half of last season, bearing in mind where they were in July. They went to New England at the end of July, then didn’t win a game for the rest of the season. It was two points out of a possible 42. Some of those games at the end of the season, there was a 6-0 loss at LA Galaxy, and 5 -1 at Real Salt Lake. It was a difficult, difficult time, and not easy to watch. It was difficult for the fans. So hope springs eternal, and it’s another season where all of the teams have fresh hopes going into the weekend.