The Rapids return home for a rivalry-week matchup with Real Salt Lake on Saturday night. Wiebe has been with the league for over a decade in various roles, including his current position where he covers major storylines around the league alongside Jake Zivin and Taylor Twellman on Sunday Night Soccer broadcasts.
Having been around the league for a while, how important are rivalries in this sport and the energy that they bring to clubs and fan bases?
I think rivalry games are a magnifier. Everything gets bigger when your biggest challenger—whether that's competitively, emotionally or both—comes up on the schedule. It's an opportunity for you to look through a lens that's not just 90 minutes and three points but is also head-to-head against an opponent that you measure yourself on, and your season gets measured on. Those moments can sink seasons, they can elevate seasons, they can reinforce existing feelings and trends, and they can break you and tear down what you thought about yourself. The beautiful thing to me about rivalry week, and rivalries overall, is that we get a heaping helping of these. So, you have all these fraught matches where there's no guesswork about the stakes. It's crystal clear. It's in front of your face. Everybody has to be up for those matches at the risk of embarrassment. It adds to the overall context of a season. For clubs that are in a bad place, and I would say the Rapids after four losses and one win in their last seven, this is a gut-check moment. You're at home against RSL, and historically, they have really gotten the better of the club. If you don't show up now, then what?
The Rapids are in the midst of a tough stretch of form as of late, how can the team bounce back with their biggest rivals coming to town?
I think it depends on your perspective. Fortunately for the Rapids, recent history is better against RSL than it has been in the medium- to long-term past. I would say that if these moments don't bring out the best in your team, whether you're Colorado or RSL, that's where you go back to the drawing board because there shouldn't be any question mark about motivation, energy or effort in a rivalry match. So, if you come up short for any of those reasons, you've got a serious deficiency. If you come up short for more execution or tactical reasons, then you have a deficiency to address there as well. To me, the Rapids are under big-time pressure in this match. They haven't won in five. Their season is a little bit shaky right now. RSL is a team that is not, by any means, in some prime stretch of form. This is a game at home that, if you're Colorado, you should expect to win, and if you don't, just like any team around the league in rivalry week, you have to have a real moment of self-assessment. It's not necessarily going to sink your season, but it can be a warning sign early on as to where your season is headed.
What has your experience been with the Rocky Mountain Cup matchup, any specific memories?
I have two that come to mind. One was from very early in the rivalry, and that's Pablo Mastroeni in Utah lighting the bonfire for what would be a really fun rivalry over the years. There's a lot of he said-he said about exactly what happened and why it happened, but I think what we all remember is the feeling of like, ‘oh, this is real.’ There's dislike and a real competitive edge. This is not something that needs to be manufactured. The players on the field, the fans in the stands, and even the owners, are a part of it. When you mix all of that together, you get what has become a decade-plus grudge match. That's what we all are hoping for when a rivalry match starts to take place. Then the other one is a little bit more modern, and it's Cole Bassett after another loss to RSL so frustrated that he was close to the point of tears saying, ‘We've got to fix this. We've got to find a way to get over the hump.’ I think that was a big turning point for the club overall of a player stepping to the plate and taking ownership of a painful moment and also taking ownership of the future and saying, ‘this will change. It has to change.’
Are there any Rapids players you think may have an added impact in this match against Real Salt Lake?
I'll give two players. Oliver Larraz and Josh Atencio. If you look at Real Salt Lake this year, no player but one has more than one goal, and it's Diego Luna. He likes to float in and around those half spaces, pick up the ball and beat players off the dribble and just be opportunistic. He is in an absolute jet fuel run of form. It's going to take two guys in Larraz and Atencio paying special attention to Luna to keep him from making a game-changing play. If you can keep Diego Luna from making a game-changing play right now against this RSL team, you have a good chance of keeping them off the board. If the Rapids can do that, they have every opportunity to win at home.
How do you see Saturday’s match playing out?
I think the Rapids are trying to find the right identity and style of play for themselves. I think they've got to go back to finding a balance against RSL, and I think the key to that balance is very clearly Cole Bassett. When Cole Bassett is able to impact the game on both sides of the ball and help link defense to attack and create transition phases for RSL, that puts everybody in the best possible position, Djordje Mihailovic in particular. When Cole Bassett is making late arriving runs and capitalizing on them like he did last year, then that changes the complexion of the way that this Rapids team can attack as well. To me, for Colorado, it should be less about what they think Real Salt Lake are going to do outside of Luna and more about the type of game and the type of identity that they want to have at home. I would want to see that be a little bit more balanced with Cole Bassett being the engine that he was last year and the star on the field for them in terms of playing on both sides of the ball.
