The Colorado Rapids, who currently sit three points adrift at the bottom of the MLS standings, have dismissed head coach Robin Fraser.
Fraser, 56, was let go on Tuesday with Colorado having won just three times in 26 league matches in 2023. Per the Rapids, assistant coach Chris Little will lead the team on an interim basis while the team seeks a new full-time manager.
“We’re incredibly grateful to Robin for his commitment to the club and for what he achieved during his time here as head coach,” said Rapids club president Pádraig Smith in a statement announcing the move. “This was a difficult decision but one we felt was necessary to best position the club to return to the playoffs and ultimately compete for trophies. We thank Robin for his four years of dedicated work and we wish him nothing but the best in the future.”
Colorado has endured a season that can only be described as miserable. Despite a more or less average defensive record — the club’s 39 goals against are the joint-20th best figure in the league — the Rapids’ struggles in front of goal have wrecked any hopes of a playoff spot. Colorado has just 16 goals in 26 matches, and has been shut out nine times in 10 matches.
The club’s current goalless streak sits at 478 minutes, stretching back to a 2-1 win over FC Dallas on July 8. That’s a major reason why Colorado has won just once since mid-May, a stretch of 15 games.
MLS teams losing patience
Fraser is the sixth head coach to be dismissed in MLS this season, and like the Rapids, every team to make that choice currently sits outside of the playoff places.
That tracks with a 2022 season that saw five bosses get their marching orders, and a chaotic 2021 that was the end of the road for 11 different coaches through either being fired, mutual termination, or resignations.
Fraser’s path to this point is somewhat instructive. His previous head coaching job was in 2012 at Chivas USA, a club that was such a notorious mess that MLS folded it in 2014. After spending most of six seasons as an assistant coach with the New York Red Bulls and Toronto FC, Fraser got another shot as a head coach when hired by the Rapids in August 2019.
The early returns were good: a struggling Colorado side won five of its final seven games after Fraser took charge, and followed that by making the playoffs in the shortened 2020 season. In 2021, Fraser’s Rapids won the Western Conference, posting a club-record 61 points, only to be stunned by the Portland Timbers in a playoff upset.
2022 was not as good, with the Rapids missing a playoff berth by four points. However, at that point Fraser’s record in MLS play with Colorado stood at 41W-24D-28L, a 1.58 points-per-game pace that would generally be more than good enough to make the postseason.
In years past, the Rapids — normally seen by league observers as the club most neglected by ownership in MLS — may have pointed to that record as a reason to forgive a season as dismal as this year. With coaches getting less time than in past seasons, though, perhaps even Colorado felt some pressure to signal that a run like this requires change.
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