Grab them quick because they are selling like hot takes!
Why football is so great- For the first sixty minutes the game on Wednesday was just terrible if you were a fan of the Whitecaps.
The team were lacklustre, the tactics were wrong and Seattle were passing the ball around like they actually practiced that kind of thing.
Then a red card, a goal created out of almost nothing and suddenly the final thirty minutes were a heart pounding mix of agony, hope and hastily thought through bargains with the gods of the sport.
Spinning dramatic silk from a sow’s ear of a game is what football does best.
Mystery solved- We don’t want to delve too much more on Carl Robinson’s decision making (we do really) but there’s always been some debate about whether his reluctance to make early changes is down to an inability to see what is wrong with the team or simply his footballing philosophy.
Well, after the Seattle game he said “I knew straight away after about ten minutes, I probably would have made two subs after about ten minutes” when speaking about how poor his team were.
Why he then waited another forty minutes to make any change at all speaks volumes about his willingness to sacrifice the present performance over the possibility of future player unrest.
The remainder of the season will determine if that is the right strategy.
BC Place is not Shea stadium The Brek Shea for Giles Barnes deal is beginning to look more and more like a like for like swap (that’s more likes than this blog has ever had!).
Because, like Barnes, Shea seems to be a player who doesn’t quite fit into the way the team want to play.
He will almost certainly start in Orlando so maybe that will be the breakthrough performance that kickstarts his career in Vancouver, but when your benched DP (no matter how tenuous that designation is) isn’t one of the three changes you make in a big game at home you’ve got a square peg/round hole scenario for sure.
So what now? Predicting MLS in general is folly and predicting this Whitecaps team is folly cubed.
We will get what we will get.
One thing for sure though is that if their “character” only stretches to playing well at home when there backs are against the wall it’s going to be tough haul for the rest of the year.
Sooner or later that “character” will have to demonstrate that it can take control of a game before it gets away from them if they are to genuinely prosper
Soccer Shorts (The Director's Cut) 