COMMERCE CITY — Followers of the Rapids might have been miffed this summer when MLS teams were signing high-priced international players, seemingly leaving the Rapids behind.
As it turns out, the Rapids already had one of the league’s most talented scorers. And the way Omar Cummings has progressed in what has unquestionably been a breakout season, scoring 12 goals and sparking his team’s playoff run with six tallies last month, the 28-year-old Jamaican may be on his way to becoming an expensive international player.
“We’re blessed right now to be able to watch this kid play, because with the pace he has, and the year he’s having, if someone doesn’t snatch him up in the next year I’d be surprised,” former Rapids great Marcelo Balboa said. “He’s top two, three, in the league as a forward.”
Cummings was the MLS player of the week after scoring two goals with an assist against Chivas USA on Sept. 4. A week later against New York — the team with “designated players” Juan Pablo Angel, Thierry Henry and Rafael Marquez — Cummings scored on a 30-yard laser that was designated the MLS goal of the week. Cummings finished September as the league’s player of the month and has an outside chance of winning the league’s scoring title.
“I’m so glad we didn’t have to play against athletes like that, with pace like that, with skill like that,” said Balboa, one of the league’s greatest defenders who played from 1996-2002. “This is the modern forward right now. He’s got everything you want.”
Cummings grew up about 20 miles from Kingston and two miles from the beach, the son of a truck driver. He played soccer constantly with his four siblings, along with cousins next door.
“We were always playing,” Cummings said. “Played at school, came home and played. In the summer, we’d hardly be at home. We would play, play, play and come home when we were hungry.”
In his locker at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, Cummings has a picture of Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt. They’ve met — Bolt trains on a track at a facility where Cummings has practiced with the Jamaican national team — and Cummings was filled with pride when Bolt won two gold medals in world-record time at the Beijing Olympics.
Cummings is blazing fast too, but he has harnessed other elements of his game this season to make his breakthrough. He has developed an almost magical ability to thread his way through multiple defenders with the ball, creating a shot for himself or passing to a teammate left open by defenders ganging up on him.
“He’s exciting,” Rapids coach Gary Smith said. “He’s extremely quick and difficult to deal with. He’s grown enormously with his techniques, his choices of when to take players on, his ability to then take them on. His finishing over the last month or so has shown what he’s capable of.”
The more Cummings scores, the more teammates feed him the ball, even when he’s marked.
“They have that confidence, ‘I see pressure, I’m still going to give you the ball, because I know you can get out of those situations,’ ” Cummings said. “That gives you added confidence, when your teammates have confidence in you.”
As his stock has risen, there has been speculation Cummings might leave Colorado. He has two years remaining on his Rapids contract, but in soccer, players under contract are bought and sold. The Rapids could sell Cummings to a team in Europe or Latin America while they still control his rights, or they could let his contract run out and get nothing for him if he chooses to sign elsewhere, similar to the Nuggets’ situation with all-star Carmelo Anthony.
“If a club came in and offered a huge amount of money for Omar, of course it would be foolish of the club, the league, for the development of the player, to turn that down,” Smith said. “The player deserves the right to move, the club deserves the right fee. He’s a big part of what we’re trying to achieve. To lose him for anything less than he’s worth would be crazy.”
Smith makes it clear he’d rather not see that day come, and that it would take a fabulous deal to pry Cummings loose.
“For everyone who’s saying, ‘It’s just a case of when he goes,’ that’s not the case,” Smith said. “We want him around to win things, not to move him on. He’s a big part of the club, he’s a big part of what we achieve, I know he enjoys it here. Hopefully he’s a big part of the future.”
Ever the easygoing Jamaican, Cummings doesn’t like talking about business matters.
“I just keep the focus here,” he said. “I love Colorado, I love the team. No one knows the future, so I’m enjoying what I’m doing. My focus is here, and I’m going to keep it that way.”
John Meyer: 303-954-1616 or jmeyer@denverpost.com
