We really are in the lull before the storm when it comes to the Vancouver Whitecaps and Major League Soccer right now.
Oh sure there’s the Combine where teams try to harvest young talent but that’s hardly an event to get the pulses racing (Memo to self: could lentil racing be the next big thing? Maybe roll them down a sloping track?)
So let’s kill the ennui with some random thoughts about some random football stuff.
A new coach for the Canadian men’s team- John Herdman has left the women to join the men leading to some interesting debate and some less than edifying discussion.
The biggest difference he will face is that he no longer has one of the best players in the world at his disposal and almost every team he comes up against will more than fancy their chances of beating his team.
That requires a tactical change that has nothing to do with gender and how he adapts to that specific change will determine his success or failure.
Cyle Larin on the move? These reports should carry a trigger warning for Whitecaps fans who lived through the Camilo saga.
But once again MLS is faced with the reality that maybe, just maybe, the strengths of its structure at home is a fundamental weakness when exposed to the wide world.
Like a player who happily stays at one club and never really tests themselves elsewhere MLS just looks unprepared and unawares when a determined foreign club wants one of their own.
And the long learned truth is that the player always wins in these types of disputes once the choking chains of the CBA are no longer in play.
New chief at the Canadian Premier League- David Clanachan has been named as the first Commissioner of the upcoming CPL and it must be reassuring for fans to know that the future of the league is now in the hands of a man who earned his success in a role which encouraged franchises to prosper based on the assumption that each would be indistinguishable from the next.
The appointment does show that the league is a serious prospect however and soccer in Canada can only benefit from the addition of more professional teams.
The overly used “We are Canadian” schtick could get wearisome though. I get that is aimed at distinguishing the league from MLS specifically and that an identity needs to be established in the early days but hopefully there will be more to inspire potential CPL supporters than the simplistic embrace of of nationality.
Video Assistant Referees- I’m not going to get into the whole VAR debate again except to say that it’s crazy that people are calling it “V” “A” “R” and not Var (to rhyme with car).
Presumably these people enter their “P” “I” “N” at the bank and discuss how much “R” “A” “M” their computers have.
If an acronym can be pronounced as a word then do so!
Soccer Shorts (The Director's Cut) 