Colorado club president Tim Hinchey says it's disrespectful to Pablo Mastroeni to call former New York City FC manager Jason Kreis an upgrade on the Rapids' current coach.
Mastroeni and the Rapids have struggled during his two-season tenure as head coach and have won just 17 of 68 Major League Soccer matches. But Hinchey was quick to show faith in the former Rapids player as the club's coach of the future.
"I think it's disrespectful to call [Kreis] 'an obvious upgrade over Pablo,'" Hinchey told MLSSoccer.com. "I have a head coach, so I'm not interested in commenting on other people that are available."
Rapids' technical director and vice president Paul Bravo agreed, and both men moved to dispel rumors that the club was looking for a replacement for Mastroeni, who played 225 games for Colorado in his MLS career.
"We're aligned in this," Bravo said. "I think the consistency piece is a good component. When you strip down the components and look at the positives and the negatives, the negatives certainly outweigh the positives, but we've made progress -- maybe not the sort of progress in certain areas that we'd like, but there has been progress."
Hinchey said the club had obvious concerns to address in the offseason, with poor results at home and a lack of punch in the offensive third topping the list. However, hiring a new assistant for Mastroeni -- not finding a replacement -- is the course the club plans to take going into 2016.
"We never really hired a really experienced, top assistant after Wilmer [Cabrera] and the whole group left," Hinchey said. "That's something we're interested in doing. An experienced coach that can help the entire club and specifically help Pablo is a good thing."
Bravo added that the club had outlined specific personnel upgrades and changes they could make ahead of next season to help them find more success in scoring goals and finishing in contention for the MLS playoffs.
"I think we need a little bit more pace in wide areas, whether that's fullbacks or attacking players in our base 4-2-3-1 system," Bravo said. "We do have individual characteristics that we're hunting for. Maybe a couple players with a bit more insight in that final-third phase to add to the group and accentuate what we currently have."
Colorado had the second-worst record in MLS in 2015. The team won just nine of its 34 games and finished dead last in the Western Conference.