BOULDER — The Colorado Rapids opened preseason training camp for 2017 this week on the indoor turf of the University of Colorado’s football training bubble with big expectations for the new year.
Coming off a season in which Colorado finished second in the Supporters’ Shield race and made it to the conference final, the feeling at training camp was quite different from the past two seasons under coach .
“It does feel different,” Mastroeni said. “The previous two years — going into last year we ended the season very poorly in the table. There wasn’t something you could say, ‘OK, we can build on this for next year.’
“(For) 2017 I feel like we’ve built an unbelievable culture in the locker room. We have a core group of guys returning, we were one of the best defensive teams in the league, so there’s a lot things you can build on.”
Mastroeni said one thing the team plans to focus on is improving its attack, which scored just 39 goals in 2016 — tied for second fewest in MLS.
The Rapids will train in Boulder through the weekend and then head to Los Angeles on Monday where they will train at the Rams’ football facility. They plan to compete in the Desert Diamond Cup in Tucson in mid-February.
“Having a group that’s most players returning is a huge benefit in terms of we can jump-start a little further along than we were last year,” said Rapids center back , who was named to MLS Best XI last year. “We can start building on things that maybe we didn’t have time to get to last year in preseason.”
Among the new faces Thursday were free-agent striker Alan Gordon, four unsigned draft picks, two new Homegrown signings and a new assistant coach — Rapids’ all-time goal scoring leader Conor Casey. The only players missing were midfielder (away with the Uganda national team) and recently signed midfielder Bismark “Nana” Adjei-Boateng.
“We’ve got five weeks, we’ve got it all mapped out,” Mastroeni said. “We know where we’re going and how we’re going to get there.”
