Well that was awful.
Kansas is never an easy place to play but the Whitecaps made it even harder with their performance on Saturday evening.
They gave away a goal in the first half thanks to yet another series of unforced errors and even when Kansas went down to ten men early in the second half Vancouver failed to take advantage.
It’s a fairly basic tenet of playing against a team who are a man down that you need to pass and move, keep good possession and make the opponent work at chasing the ball.
Yet the Whitecaps did none of those things.
Stuck as they were in the kind of ponderous build up play that is just about acceptable on the road when facing a superior opponent, but serves no purpose whatsoever when there should be the scent of blood in the water.
So there was a kind of karmic suitability to Doneil Henry going down injured and being withdrawn almost immediately after Marc Dos Santos had made his third and final substitution of the game.
Fail to take advantage of that kind of opportunity and the Universe will happily kick you in the teeth.
It’s hard to say who played well.
But Russell Teibert battled for everything and Fredy Montero never gave up in the search for scraps of opportunities (but the fact that Montero was constantly dropping deep to pick up the ball gives a pretty good indication of how poor the service he received was).
Where the Whitecaps go from here is hard to say.
If they can’t create an offensive threat against a team as injury ravaged as Kansas City and when that team is also down to ten men then even the well worn excuses of of “It’s technically an expansion year” and “They will strengthen in the summer” lose what little patina of respectability they continue to have.
All in all this was arguably the most dispiriting performance of the season. A brutal reminder of the deficiencies of both the starting eleven and the squad as a whole.
And maybe this was even the first crack in the armour surrounding Dos Santos as a coach? He can only work with what he has for sure, but the continuing inability to create chances should have been at least partially solved on the training ground by now.
On, and as an addendum, Derek Cornelius smacked home a sweet left footed volley in the final minute to earn the Whitecaps a hugely creditable away point in Kansas.
All is well!
Time for the Soccer Shorts Player ratings.
Crepeau-5.5, Nerwinksi-5, Adnan-6, Henry-5.5, Godoy-5.5, Felipe-5, Teibert-6*, Rose-5.5, PC-4, Venuto-4, Montero-5.5 (Cornelius-5, In-Beom-4, Ardaiz-4)
Soccer Shorts (The Director's Cut) 