Guest Post: The writing was on the wall for Pablo

The infamous rant by the now former head coach of the Colorado Rapids at the end of May explains a lot

On Saturday, May 27th, Pablo Mastroeni essentially got himself fired, even though his team managed a home victory against Sporting Kansas City. SKC dominated the match by outshooting the Rapids 24-6, outpassing them 629-225, and outpossessing Colorado by a 73-27 percentage margin.

Nonetheless Mastroeni was happy to get the win and talked about how everything unfolded in his post-match press conference. He did not hide his feelings.

In his now infamous remarks Mastroeni said, “Stats will lose to the human spirit every day of the week.” He prefaced that by saying that "analytics and statistics are used for people who don’t know how to analyze the game.”

That philosophy does not mesh well with the ideals of Padraig Smith, the Rapids’ sporting director since 2015, who coincidentally was promoted to interim general manager in late July.

When Smith was hired, he was asked about his upcoming role at the Rapids. He responded, “First and foremost, I’ll help to introduce a more data analytical approach to our player recruitment, player identification, performance analysis and scouting processes.”

Now it doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots that the philosophies of Mastroeni and Padraig Smith were not a good fit. Therefore, with his first major decision of his term as interim general manager Smith decided to fire Mastroeni.

The fact that the Rapids are in next to last place in the Western Conference, at 6-12-4, does not help. Aside from last season, when they finished second in the conference, the Rapids finished last or next to last in every season under Mastroeni’s leadership.