Within the last three thousand years (the merest blink of any eye in the history of life on the planet) the Tibetan people have evolved their bodies to deal with living at what, for the rest of us, would be abnormal altitudes.
Actually, let’s row that back a little.
“Tibetans have evolved their bodies” implies a degree of agency in the process. As though they have held a series of exploratory meetings and focus groups to determine the whole process.
“Right, the three remaining options on the table are “Being able to live at high altitudes”, “X-Ray vision” or “Being able to slow down time when facing attack”.
Mother Nature does not work like that I am afraid, for she is a fickle and capricious trickster playing games of chance with DNA and fertility.
But if the Tibetans lucked out in the lottery of the high life what can their good fortune tell us about the Vancouver Whitecaps this season?
Perhaps that sometimes the best way to achieve a desired result is to not over think things?
Yeah, let’s go with that.
Ironically there’s an alternate universe somewhere where the Professional Referee Organization (Hilariously shortened to PRO) doesn’t have to release a weekly edict announcing that a game deciding penalty kick was incorrectly awarded against the Whitecaps and, in that universe, Marc Dos Santos has seen his team earn two fairly impressive away points against Western Conference rivals.
But in our current universe the Whitecaps have zero points from three games with substantial issues to be addressed in all three areas of the field.
The defence can’t defend, the midfield can’t attack and the attack can’t score goals.
Given this existential threat to the very nature of what a football team should be there must be a part of the Dos Santos psyche that is clamouring for the security of two holding midfielders to sit in front of the back four or, at the very least, the reassurance of having a target man up front.
That elusive “out” ball that will give his defenders another option as they go through their “Bambi on Ice” routine of trying to play out from the back.
But the Dos Santos psyche needs to shut the f%#* up because if he has to be in this then he has to be in this for the long haul.
He wasn’t signed to simply “get results”, he was signed to change the DNA of the Whitecaps, to transform them from a lump of pragmatic dross into something that is worth watching.
The Tibetans will tell you that such a transformation takes time and a degree of fortune that MDS not yet enjoyed but, what you cannot do, is suddenly switch evolutionary horses in midstream in the vain hope of landing on a winner.
So patience is still the watchword for those of us who follow the team week in and week out.
But some kind of visible success in less than three thousand years would be the optimal outcome.
Soccer Shorts (The Director's Cut) 