Marcelo Balboa remembers the validation he felt 30 years ago as he and the Colorado Rapids walked onto the field at Mile High Stadium for the first time.
The club icon packed up from a successful Club León team in Mexico to join the upstart MLS in 1996, which in its inaugural year had 10 teams, most of which were split up between just three owners. After doing work on the ground and hustling street corners to raise awareness of the Rapids, he was awestruck by the some 21,000 fans who witnessed a 3-1 victory over the Dallas Burn.
Soccer in America, and the financial volatility that came with the territory, put pressure on teams to perform in every match. Balboa recalls that after the league’s inception, it was set for three years, and every few years was a trial run for the next.
“Depending on how those three years went, that would determine the next three years,” Balboa told media members on Friday afternoon.
Safe to say, they went OK — MLS expanded to 30 teams in 2025 and the average club is valued at $767 million, according to Sportico in a February report. Thatap a far cry from the stakes Balboa described.
“When we stepped out on the field, you see 20,000 people applauding you, itap like, ‘Holy crap, OK. This can work,’” Balboa said. “…We wanted to put on a good show because we knew this was going to be the first time fans in Colorado were going to see what we can do, and on a blessed day, it worked out great, we won, 3-1. The idea was to make sure that we try to entertain.”
30 years later, almost to the day, the Rapids have a similar opportunity. The league’s survival won’t be on the line, but the club’s relevance in the Denver market — arguably the country’s most successful right now — very much could ride on a positive result on Saturday.
Thatap because Inter Miami and its global superstar, Lionel Messi, are coming to town. To accommodate the demand and celebrate the club’s 30th anniversary, Saturday’s 2:30 p.m. kick will be held at Empower Field at Mile High, home of the Broncos.
The club announced on Friday that it has sold more than 70,000 tickets, nearing the stadium’s capacity and breaking the club attendance record, all just a few hundred feet from where it all started in Denver.
But the Rapids, in sixth place in the Western Conference, won’t be just happy to be there. They have something to prove.
A solid resume has been building since 37-year-old Matt Wells took over as head coach for the first time in his career. In just seven games, the Rapids have scored 19 goals, deadlocking them with Vancouver for the league’s most. So far, results have mirrored the style of play in terms of being all-or-nothing — Colorado has four wins, three losses and has not yet drawn.
The wins so far have come against lesser competition. Inter Miami provides the best challenge and litmus test yet.
“We want to be the best version of ourselves tomorrow. We’ve got an excellent home record, we’ve been superb here in Colorado and in the altitude, so the fact we’re in a different stadium doesn’t make a difference to me,” Wells said. “From minute one, we come here, we press the game, we need to take the ball away from them. They want to have the ball, we want to have the ball, so itap going to be a fantastic occasion.
“I know if we stick to our principles, we can win this game and we can play some great football thatap going to excite the fans.”
The defending MLS Cup champions aren’t without their flaws, though. This week, coach Javier Mascherano shocked the league by departing the club, leaving Guillermo Hoyos as the interim coach. On the field, Miami sits in third in the Eastern Conference but isn’t scoring like itap accustomed to (just 13 goals in seven games).
Still, like it proved in the MLS Cup final last season, the duo of Messi and Rodrigo De Paul can be dangerous at any given moment. Add into the mix Uruguayan legend Luis Suárez, who missed the 2025 final, and you’ve got a nightmare of a puzzle to solve. Whether Hoyos can maintain Miami’s structure in a short turnaround is an open question.
If the Rapids can solve it, though, they can win much more than a game. Every time Messi and Miami travel to a new city, enormous crowds are littered with fans — who wouldn’t necessarily go out of their way to watch that marketap team — there to witness the Argentine spectacle.
Colorado, which recently announced plans to revamp its brand and redesign its crest in an effort to reinsert itself in the Denver market, has an opportunity to capture the casual soccer fan at Empower on Saturday. Especially now that Wells has reestablished the high-flying, suffocating and dominant product on the field the club often says it wants to get back to, but has gone missing for nearly a decade.
“All I see is opportunity for us to play our football and opportunity for us to put on an incredible showing for our fans that come to every game, and for us to put on a great show to the fans that are maybe coming for the first time and potentially coming for different reasons — to see Miami and Messi,” Wells said. “We’re definitely determined to make a good impression on them, and hopefully itap a catalyst for more people watching us play our football, because so far, we’ve done some great things this season.”
