From last night but now with additional contemplations.
A 1-1 tie on the road to the LA Galaxy isn’t the worst result in the world, but the Vancouver Whitecaps still resemble a work in flux more than they do a work in progress.
And that perception isn’t helped by the coach.
In this game Sartini started Cordova up front with White and Dajome as the de facto number tens. (Spoiler alert! White and Dajome and not number tens). And he elected to play the best number ten in the team as a midfielder.
Trying to turn Ryan Gauld into the new Russell Teibert seems a strange path to take but there we go.
Last season Sartini was probably saved by a cup competition, and there’s enough of those this year to give him some leeway. But Axel Schuster surely can’t be watching these performances and thinking that the coach is getting the best out of this squad?
Eventually even the footballing gods had seen enough of such nonsense and an injury to Cordova and the exhaustion of Dajome forced the coach to revert to a semblance of common sense.
The Cordova signing already looks snake bitten. But signing a front man who can’t press to a team that wants to press from the front will enhance that perception.
The Whitecaps weren’t great after those changes but they were better than they were before.
Now if they could just spend some time practicing how to kick the ball to a player in the same colour shirt when they reach the edge of the opposition penalty area they might start to win a game or two.
The lack of compusure on the final pass last night was almost hilariously bad and has to be a sympton of the lack of cohesion the team seems incapable of resolving.
Overall though this game didn’t feel like the renaissance this team needs. Nor did it even feel like the beginning of the end of the dark ages.
Not quite the Plague of Justinian perhaps, but certainly not the Code of Justinian.
Time for the Soccer Shorts player ratings!
Takaoka-5, Brown-5, Raposo-5.5, Veselinovic-5.5, Blackmon-6*, Cubas-6, Gressel-4.5, Gauld-5.5, Dajome-4, White-4, Cordova-3 (Vite-3.5)
Soccer Shorts (The Director's Cut) 