It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Colorado Rapids can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
“I respect the manager and I am not going to sit here and pretend I am happy.” It is the most common sentence in football and it has never once been the end of a story.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Kimani Stewart-Baynes trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Colorado Rapids this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Forrest Lasso and Colorado Rapids agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Colorado Rapids are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
Forrest Lasso is 33 and has run out of things to prove. What he has left is where to stand, when to slow it down and what to say at half-time, and none of that is on a fitness chart.
12 new faces, and Colorado Rapids are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
He has had enough of the noise. Whether Colorado Rapids can be a quieter place for him, or whether the only cure is a move somewhere the phone-ins are gentler, is a question for the next few months.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Andrew Tarbell and Colorado Rapids agree another 3 years.
“I did not come here to warm up in front of people.” He is out of contract eventually, he is old enough to count the weeks, and Colorado Rapids will have to give him a reason to stay or an exit.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Zack Steffen signs something — a contract at Colorado Rapids or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
FC Dallas next, and one man in the Colorado Rapids dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
Numbers do not stay secret in a dressing room. He is not asking for more than he is worth; he is asking why somebody beside him is worth more, and Colorado Rapids have no good answer.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Colorado Rapids. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Colorado Rapids can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
The dugout24 Aug 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Paul Musah to a room that had heard them before.
Successful dribbles: 15. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Somebody else has been better, the manager has said so with a team sheet, and there is no argument to be had. He will get the shirt back the only way it can be got back.
The manager wanted a different profile for this opponent, which is a real football reason and no consolation. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
At 31 he has made the position his own, and the man he took it from has to find something to say about it. Colorado Rapids have a decision that made itself.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 17 arrived, 0 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Colorado Rapids have done the hard part with Veracruz, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
Houston Dynamo wanted more than $590.0K and the board would not go there. Walked away, for now, which in a transfer window means until somebody blinks.
Zack Steffen was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Loïc Williams and Colorado Rapids agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
At 21 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
The name of Nico Hansen has come up in conversations Colorado Rapids were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. James Brooks is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Gio Acosta has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.