By all appearances, Matt Wells occupied an enviable position at Tottenham Hotspur.
Wells earned a role as one of manager Thomas Frank’s top assistants this season, the only member of the first-team staff to remain from his Europa League-winning predecessor Ange Postecoglou, a sign of leadership’s respect for his abilities in an industry where churn is the norm.
Working under the bright lights of the English Premier League and UEFA Champions League are life goals for players and coaches around the world, and Wells reached that stage earlier than most, having dived headlong into coaching at age 20 after injuries cut his playing career short. In fact, Tottenham were his third EPL gig, having already worked under Scott Parker at Fulham FC and AFC Bournemouth.
Spurs were more than just a job, too. His grandfather, Cliff Jones, is a club icon, a star of Tottenham’s 1960s heyday and still one of its all-time leading scorers. Wells himself climbed their academy ranks in his youth.
New challenge
Why leave all that behind to transplant his wife, their dog and 15-month-old daughter to distant, unfamiliar Colorado to take over as the Rapids’ new head coach?
“Quite a few people have asked me that,” Wells told MLSsoccer.com with a smile shortly before his hiring was officially announced.
“I had that upbringing as a Tottenham boy, and was in the academy from eight years old ‘til I was 20, and then came back and coached their [Under-]12s, 13s, 16s, 18s, 21s, became assistant manager, won the first trophy in 17 years and the first European trophy in 40 years. So it was never, ever going to be an easy choice to leave a club that means that much to you.
“But I'm an ambitious person, and I have personal goals, and I was also never going to let that stand in the way of a next step, if it was the right move. And this one definitely fit the bill.”
He’d taken note of MLS’s dramatic growth and the role several talented young coaches were playing in it – and had the luxury of direct contact with one of the chief examples, Minnesota United FC boss Eric Ramsay, who left Manchester United to become the league’s youngest-ever head coach in February 2024.
It can only have helped that Wells could also ring up another notable MLS name for some firsthand perspectives: LAFC superstar and Spurs legend Son Heung-Min.
“It's a league that I followed; I know there's a lot of world-class players out there,” the 37-year-old explained. “I'm very close with Sonny, and so I spoke to him through this whole process, and he was nothing but positive about the experience of playing – and the level as well, by the way.
“Same with Eric Ramsay, who obviously I know well. And speaking to Eric a lot, again, nothing but positive about the experience, the level of the league. So that was never a concern for me.”
Stateside arrival
Even as he developed a reputation as one of the EPL’s brightest young minds, Wells had an eye on North America all along. At the dawn of his coaching journey, he cut his teeth with several hectic months of Stateside youth summer camps with Challenger Sports, offering early exposure to this side of the Atlantic.
He and his wife grew fond of vacationing in the US, and a few years ago he was all set to join Vancouver Whitecaps FC to lead their residential academy program, only for Spurs to talk him out of that departure by promoting him to take charge of their U-21 team. He hints at “a fair bit of interest” from more than one MLS club more recently, before making clear that the ethos of the Rapids and club president Pádraig Smith made his final decision an easy one.
“It's my first head coach role, it has to be a success,” Wells said. “And of all the people I spoke to, Colorado was, by far and away, the organization I felt that matched my ambition, my values. The opportunity to come here and improve on last season and create something special was just too big of a draw for me.
“When you're an assistant, of course you're contributing, but the team's never playing in your image.”
Wells has made the conscious choice to leave his homeland behind and cut against the conventional pathway for aspiring managers in Britain: Drop down to the English Championship or another lower division, where it’s perceived to be simpler to build a track record.
“I'm a bold person, and I also look at other people – obviously Eric, but there's other coaches that are coaching in different leagues across the world, the likes of Robbie Keane and Liam Rosenior, coaches I really, really respect,” he explained. “I actually love the fact that they take a different pathway. They don't take the easy option just to go to the Championship. I think the rate of development I'm going to get by moving here is going to be far accelerated.”
'Dominate framework'
Indeed, the Rapids have fashioned themselves into a development-centric organization, trending younger with signings like Paxten Aaronson, Josh Atencio, Noah Cobb and a cadre of homegrowns headlined by Cole Bassett and Darren Yapi.
Wells is ready to work with what he’s got, though he’s already been providing his input in recent weeks on areas of need in a team that faded down the stretch in 2025, missing out on the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs after spending most of the season above the playoff line under now-former coach Chris Armas.
“To play my way effectively,” he said, “we need to add certain qualities to the squad that don't exist, and [Colorado's] been brilliant in terms of being receptive to that and putting a process in place.
“Touch wood, I think before preseason begins, we'll have two new signings through the door, one right winger and one central midfielder, and they come with specific qualities that I was adamant that we needed to have in the squad.”
So just what is Wells’ way of playing? He centers his explanation around one phrase.
“It's called the ‘dominate framework,’” he explained. “There's a lot of detail that goes into it, but every game, we're going to try to dominate and we need to have that ‘big team’ mentality when we step on the pitch. I don't care who we're playing, where we're playing, what referee’s reffing the game, how many fans are there or not there, because we're going into the game to dominate and be the proactive team on the pitch.
“OK, what are the actual tangible football things that allow you to do that? And that's going to be in our pressing, making sure that tactically, we're so well-drilled that we can regain the ball high up the pitch. If teams then decide – which I think will happen, because we'll be pressing well – to go longer, then how do we control the first ball and the second ball to turn that into a possession phase?
"But we have to dominate the opponent by pressing. Then it's about how we dominate the ball. And that's going to be a large focus of our work through preseason.”
Big goals
To lay the groundwork, Wells has been sitting down individually with every Rapid to walk them through a personalized video session incorporating clips from their own past performances as well as “best practices” – examples from the world’s best in their position. Yapi’s session included snippets from a “top reference” like Harry Kane, one of many elite players Wells worked with individually in the past.
“It's trying to give all of them an insight into the fundamentals they're going to need to master to play the system and the principles that we play,” said Wells. “Even when you're working with world-class players, you can still show them top references of things that other players have done. So I think players respond to that well.”
The end goal is simple, but daunting: To guide the Rapids – who haven’t won a playoff game since 2016 – into the MLS elite, and keep them there.
“Listen,” said Wells, “I've come to an organization where I can be successful. I've said through all my conversations, I come in here to win the MLS Cup. That's my aim, that's my ambition.
"That's why I want to transmit to the ownership, the staff here, the players, and I think that mindset will be contagious. And then we just have to work hard every single day to make that happen.”
