The Colorado Rapids have parted ways with head coach Robin Fraser, the club announced Tuesday morning.
The decision comes amid a slide that’s seen the Rapids fail to win 17 of 18 games dating back to mid-May, the lone win in that stretch coming against FC Dallas in July. On Saturday, Colorado lost the Rocky Mountain Cup for the third consecutive season to archrival Real Salt Lake in a 2-0 defeat that was seen as the final nail in the coffin for the season.
Fraser took over in August 2019 as the ninth head coach in club history and led the team to a playoff appearance in 2020 and historic 2021 in which the club finished at the top of Major League Soccer’s Western Conference. All-time with the Rapids, Fraser, a former defender with Colorado, went 47-48-34.
The club announced Chris Little has been named interim head coach for the final eight games of the 2023 campaign, as Colorado (3-13-10, 19 points after 26 games played) sits dead-last in MLS and is among the favorites to win “The Wooden Spoon”, a trophy mockingly awarded from one supporters’ group to another whose team has the worst record in the league.
A spokesperson told The Post that the Rapids have begun the process for finding a permanent replacement for Fraser, though the timeline to a potential hire remains unclear. Fraser signed a contract extension through the end of the 2025 season last spring, and the club will owe him the remainder of his contract pay.
The team consistently had disappointing results following the 2021 season in which Fraser was runner-up for MLS Coach of the Year. The next year the Rapids missed the 2022 playoffs by four points.
“(Robin) mentioned after the Austin game last year that, ‘We’re not going to have another year like this — it’s an anomaly, come back in 12 weeks’ time ready to go,” team captain Jack Price said at the 2023 media day in January.
While there was a sense of optimism the 2023 season could be different, it’s been just the opposite. The Rapids are on pace for a historically bad season as the team has scored 16 goals in league play and is on track for its lowest points-per-game total in its 27 seasons as a franchise.
“We’re incredibly grateful to Robin for his commitment to the club and for what he achieved during his time here as head coach,” Rapids president Pádraig Smith said in a team statement. “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.”
In a separate statement and message to the club’s season ticket members, Smith further addressed reasons for the dismissal, but did put blame on his own shoulders for the team which he ultimately built.
“It’s unacceptable for the type of club we want to be,” Smith wrote, “but more crucially, it’s unacceptable because this is a team that is capable of much, much more than that.”
There are now six teams that have decided to change coaches this season, as the Rapids join the New York Red Bulls (Gerhard Struber), Chicago Fire (Ezra Hendrickson), Inter Miami (Phil Neville), Toronto FC (Bob Bradley) and Portland Timbers (Gio Savarese). Four teams have since found permanent replacements, and the Timbers are still in the process of looking for a new head coach.
Additionally, Fraser was one of three Black head coaches at the start of the 2023 MLS season out of a total of 29 teams, but since then, two have been fired. That includes Hendrickson, who was let go in May after less than a season and a half in charge. Now, Columbus Crew’s Wilfred Nancy is the lone Black head coach in MLS.
Smith will address the media Wednesday morning with a news conference set for 11:30 a.m. at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park.
