Tag: Carl Robinson

The sun not yet down on the Vancouver Whitecaps

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The year 2016 certainly feels as though it’s one where decades are happening in almost every week; but what would Lenin have said about the Vancouver Whitecaps 3-0 win over Sporting Kansas City in the CCL on Wednesday evening?

“There are whole seasons where nothing happens: and there are games where whole seasons happen” perhaps?

We will probably never know what he really would have thought but safe to say  he would have left BC Place that night with the palpable taste of revolution on his tongue.

Now before we go any further let’s first acknowledge that people living in the very heart of historical moments are almost universally incapable of perceiving their import and that sometimes it can be the seemingly insignificant moments that actually dictate the path of history’s narrative (“Turn a different corner and we never would have met” as George Michael once sang (possibly in reference to the fateful meeting between Lenin and Trotsky in London in 1902?).

But with such caveats acknowledged it’s hard not to escape the sense that the aftershocks of this game could rumble on for weeks and maybe even seasons.

So what will have changed?

Two up front- Carl Robinson has been more attached to the lone striker than a barnacle to the bottom of  a banana boat but the win against Kansas offered definitive proof that his team could prosper with a forward duo (as they also did in both Toronto and Philadelphia by the way) as the running of both Hurtado and Kudo kept Kansas constantly confounded.

It may be too much to hope that he sends out a similar system in LA on Saturday but the following home game against the Red Bulls has to be pencilled in for a repeat showing given just how poor the team have been at BC Place this year.

Robinson got a “performance” by using the stick and not the carrot- It’s pretty clear that Robinson is an “arm around the shoulder” kind of coach by instinct, but something finally broke last week and he made Matias Laba pay that breakage by leaving him out of the roster for the MLS trip to Kansas.

Laba was back in the eleven on Wednesday and also back to his best as he set out with something to prove from the very first whistle.

If Robinson learns the lesson that different players need to be motivated in different ways then it bodes well for the rest of his time here and bodes ill for any players who have been coasting by on reputation alone.

The new Manneh?- It’s been somewhat shocking to find out just how much the Whitecaps miss the presence of Kekuta Manneh. Sure we all knew he offered something different to anybody else in the team but the plodding nature of the attack without him is remarkable.

The smart money was probably on Alphonso (“he’s fifteen you know”) Davies stepping into Manneh’s shoes but against SKC Fraser Aird looked much more like the heir apparent.

Like Manneh he has blistering pace and, like Manneh, he doesn’t lose much of that pace when he actually has the ball at his feet.

He doesn’t always make the right choice with his final pass (like Manneh) but whether as a starter or a late substitution Aird does at least offer a rough approximation of the speed from deep that the team has been profoundly lacking.

A change of mood?- Up until Wednesday the whole season seemed to have drifted into a kind of all encompassing mixture of lethargy and angst with most of the discussions surrounding off the pitch issues and potential hirings and firings.

Suddenly though Vancouver are clear favourites to progress to the knockout stages of the Champions League and (somewhat unbelievably) are still only two points away from a playoff spot.

Admittedly of the four teams chasing that single position they are the least well placed but sometimes the best that you can hope for is just to keep the season alive for as long as possible and the season suddenly seems to have a few more weeks than recently seemed possible.

Their next game isn’t even a “must win” (although the one after that certainly is) but if they do somehow manage to find a way to be a “coupon buster” in LA as Carl Robinson put it (no doubt confounding many people unfamiliar with British gambling vernacular) then who knows what could happen.

You gotta have faith! (Which was the original title of Lenin’s “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism” I believe).

Whitecaps find a ray of hope!

Well we all needed that!

The long dark midnight of the soul that has haunted the Whitecaps in recent weeks was split asunder by three blinding shafts of light in the form of two goals from Christian Techera and one from Erik Hurtado as Vancouver took full control of their CCL group by beating Sporting Kansas City 3-0 at BC Place.

Maybe that’s a smidgeon of dramatic overkill but it’s been weeks (months?) since the Whitecaps played with this much verve and purpose in any competition.

Carl Robinson rang the changes, most notably by switching to a 4-4-2 with Kudo and Hurtado up front and while the Japanese striker was lively it was Hurtado who stole the show with his breakaway goal and a scintillating display of the full range of his tricks and flicks throughout the game (Wait? What did I just write?).

It’s genuinely hard to find anybody who played badly but special mentions go to Techera who looked more like his lively goal scoring self again, Brett Levis who displayed a remarkable degree of comfort on the ball in his first game since signing an MLS contract and Jordan Smith who spent half the evening breaking up attacks with his sliding challenges and the other half causing havoc with his rampaging runs down the wing (Wait? What did I just write?).

Shout out too to Matias Laba who responded to being left out of the MLS squad with arguably his best performance of the season.

From the first minute it was clear that Laba was up for this game and this was a timely reminder of not just how useful his defensive qualities are but also how valuable his interceptions can be in launching the Whitecaps on the counterattack.

And let’s not forget Carl Robinson who has certainly been under scrutiny of late but responded by getting the best out of the eleven players he fielded and his biggest headache now is just who he selects for the upcoming game in LA.

He’s certainly indicated that if players put in a performance then he will reward them and on this showing the whole back four, Laba, Techera and Hurtado (at the very least) deserve to start.

That probably won’t happen but at least this game should be a reminder to a few senior players that taking a game by the scruff of the neck and all working together is a better recipe for success than whatever it is they have been trying of late.

Those speculations are for another day though because, for now, let’s just enjoy a Whitecaps performance that was not only fun to watch but also looked like fun to play in.

It’s something to build on at least.

Time for the Soccer Shorts Player Ratings

Tornaghi-7, Smith-8, Levis-8, Parker-7, Waston-7, Laba-8*, Teibert-7, Techera-8, Aird-7, Kudo-7, Hurtado-8

 

 

Whitecaps fail when the chips are down

Perhaps the worst thing to happen to Carl Robinson at the start of his career as head coach was that so many of his early signings produced positive results on the field.

Morales, Beitashour, Laba, Mezquida, Waston and even Sebastián Fernández provided valuable contributions to Robinson’s first season in charge and created the sense that the Whitecaps had a coach who could pick up quality Designated Players from the lower end of the salary cap spectrum along with bargain buys from Central and South America.

But as the seasons have progressed that has proved to be less and less the case as the likes Rivero, Rodriguez, Smith and Flores have all turned out to be busted flushes when it comes to MLS play.

And the decisions to sign Smith and Flores after both of them struggled for the previous season felt a little like watching a Blackjack player who once got lucky by hitting a two when he already had nineteen in his hand try to recreate that moment with more and more desperation.

Recent signings have indicated a move away from the philosophy that all problems can be solved by a Uruguayan but they are too little too late for this season (and may well be too little for next as well) and when every new player is designed to fix a problem rather than improve the team then glory is most certainly not on the horizon.

Perhaps the best thing to happen to Carl Robinson at this stage of his career as a head coach (and I’m talking long term here) is how much of a disaster this season has been.

If we had to define his core philosophy it would probably be that a happy team is a good team; if a coach stands up for the players then the players will stand up for the coach.

Well that isn’t happening this season as time after time the Whitecaps fade out of games once they fall behind or fail to kill off a team once they get the lead (it is possible for the Whitecaps to take the lead, I’ve checked the record books).

Now there are those who will say, who do say, that these failings are caused because the players don’t care enough about the team or the shirt or the crest, but it seems to be less about caring and more about the lack of concern any of them really have with regard to their position at the club or in the team.

Even the decision to drop Matias Laba for the game in Kansas was signaled so far ahead of time that it can’t really have shaken the player up all that much.

But sooner or later Robinson is surely going to realise (going to have to realise) that some players play well when they are happy and some players play well when they are scared and there just isn’t a one size fits all to getting the best out of a team.

If that message sinks home then the off season should at least be interesting as both he and the Front Office need to come up with a new vision as to what this team actually wants to be.

Anyway all this rambling is to avoid mentioning the 2-0 defeat in Kansas on Saturday evening where the Whitecaps didn’t play that badly but never really looked like scoring and always looked capable of conceding.

That’s how far the bar has fallen this season. A performance like that counts as “not bad”.

Time for the Soccer Shorts Player Ratings.

Ousted-6*, Aird-5, Waston, 5, Edgar-5, de Jong-5, Jacobson-5, Morales-4, Mezquida-4, Bolaños-5, Barnes-6, Perez-4

 

 

 

 

We’d like to help you learn to help yourself

Only the most optimistic of Whitecaps fans will have come away from the 2-1 defeat to the San Jose Earthquakes on Friday evening thinking that Vancouver’s playoff hopes were still alive.

Sure they could get a win in either Kansas or LA and maybe be back in the hunt but realistically this looks like a team that is as good as done when it comes to the MLS season.

But instead of plodding over the same old ground about what went wrong on the night (the shambolic defending, the inability to finish, the lack of any cohesion) let’s maybe take a step back and take a look at some of things that have gone awry with Carl Robinson this season.

What are the issues that the coach needs to address in his own performance?

Locker room culture- Robinson loves to sign a player who is “good in the locker room” but ultimately that culture has to be set by the coach and his staff and not by surrogates.

I doubt that anybody has watched the Whitecaps this year and seen a group of players who are all on the same page.

That doesn’t mean there’s internal strife and it doesn’t mean they are unhappy (they may even be too happy) but it does mean that something isn’t working.

The breaks haven’t always fallen for Vancouver this year but there are two ways of dealing with adversity in all sport; you either use it to make yourself better and stronger or you use it as an excuse for defeat.

The Whitecaps have leaned on the latter far too often in 2016 and that’s a culture that needs to be changed from the top.

The inability to change a game- If there is one thing that separates the great coaches from the good coaches and the good coaches from the average then it’s probably the capacity to take a step back from the emotion of a game and view it as an objective observer.

That’s how the really top coaches earn their salaries; with small tactical switches and substitutions at the right time.

Robinson is still learning the role but it can be so frustrating to watch the Whitecaps clearly making no inroads in a game and yet there is still a reluctance to make a change.

By the sixtieth minute against San Jose (for just one example) it was clear that the Whitecaps had run out of attacking ideas but it took another Earthquakes goal before a substitution was made and that was too little too late.

If Robinson can’t see that the changes need to be made then he needs to seek the advice of someone who can and if he can see that the changes need to be made but is reluctant to make them for fear of damaging a player’s confidence or upsetting team chemistry then he needs to be braver in making the switch.

Which leads to.

Picking names over form- Every manager will deny that they do this but every manager probably does; they all have their “favourites” and that’s fine to a degree.

The problem for Robinson is that his seeming “favourites” are really not playing well at all and so we are faced with the situation where the likes of Waston and Laba keep getting the start whereas the likes of Mezquida and Parker are either shunted into unfamiliar positions or out of the team altogether.

The coach hinted earlier in the week that he would drop one of these regular starters but that didn’t happen on Friday.

He hinted the same thing immediately following that defeat so let’s see what happens, because this policy has haunted him and hurt the team in the last few weeks.

Attitude on the road- If MLS is anything then it’s a League where any team can beat any other team on any given day yet too often this year Vancouver have gone into road trips with, if not a defeatist attitude, than at least an attitude that exudes “settling for a draw at best”.

I get that the travel is tough but enough teams have come to BC Place and outplayed the Whitecaps to make a person believe it isn’t quite that tough.

Keep talking about how hard a game or a trip will be and you give players an excuse for not performing and a lot of players will be all too happy to fall back on that excuse.

Which leads to.

Abdication of responsibility- Not in the sense of taking the blame for poor results (he definitely does that) but in the insistence that “fine lines” etc are what decide football games.

They often are but there’s a kind of “it’s out of our hands whether we win or lose” disposition that, once again, must seep through to the players and give them an easy out if things do go badly.

Players shouldn’t look for these get out clauses but they always do and they always will and it’s up to the coach to deny them the chance.

There are probably other things I could mention; the lack of any effective touchline presence and the failure to recognize that the modern coach needs to be a tribune for the fans frustrations as much as a defence counsel for the players.

But the counterbalance is that he has also had dreadful luck with injuries, suspensions and all around MLS weirdness that offers up some kind of mitigating factors, but the room for error is getting less and less roomier with every passing defeat.

It may already be too late to turn the League season around but there is still the Champion’s League to try and progress in and a core of players who can still achieve something (there was no lack of effort against San Jose, just a lack of organization) so now is the time for Robinson to make brave choices both before and during the remaining games.

If not now when? If not him who?

Time then for the Soccer Shorts player ratings.

Ousted-4, Parker-4, Waston-5, Edgar-4, De Jong-5, Morales-6, Laba-4, Bolaños -6*, Mezquida-6, Barnes-5, Kudo-4 (Davies-5, Perez-5)

D-Day for Robinson and the Whitecaps

“Must win game” is one of those eternal footballing cliches that is almost never literally true but does occasionally speak to the heart of the matter.

And Friday evening’s game against the San Jose Earthquakes very much fits into the “not literally true but it sure enough feels like it” category for the Vancouver Whitecaps.

The Whitecaps really aren’t in a good place right now (apart from Vancouver which is great right!?) with new signings having little time to settle in and a coach who seems to be struggling to settle on both a first eleven and a preferred way of playing.

So if Vancouver do fail to beat the Earthquakes then the two subsequent MLS road games (Kansas and LA) could see them drifting away from the red line of competence that constitutes the playoff marker and down into the murky depths of “there’s always next year” land.

How we’ve got to this situation is up for debate; players either not getting or not buying into how the Robinson wants them to play, a fundamentally conservative coach who is trying to get his team to play more expansive football but just can’t figure it out, key players failing to perform all over the field, a series of unfortunate incidents beyond the control of anybody.

There is probably something to be said for all of those scenarios (and many more) but while we can all have fun theorizing and hypothesizing Carl Robinson just doesn’t have that luxury.

He needs to get it right on Friday (and beyond).

And that probably means a return to the comfort zone for both the coach and the players and that means 4-2-3-1 (obviously) but with Giles Barnes in the “Manneh” role on the left.

Barnes doesn’t have the pure pace of Manneh but he can at least run with the ball and he can at least make other teams worry about his presence and force them to be a little more cautious when pushing forward. Couple that with a return to Mezquida and Kudo as the front two (who actually do provide the kind of “defence from the front” that one would assume Robinson would like) and if Morales has to play then play him deep alongside Laba or Jacobson.

 
There’s a decent argument to be made that what the Whitecaps defence need more than anything right now is just for somebody to sit in front of them and thus guarantee some kind of shield and Jacobson could probably do that job better than the more proactive Laba.

None of this solves all the problems of course. The right back roulette and the lack of cohesion just about everywhere on the field, but at least getting back to the basics of what the coach feels comfortable with may at least imbue some of that comfort into the team.

There’s still time for the Whitecaps to turn this thing around (and the pieces are definitely there to coalesce into a genuinely threatening MLS team) but the time for trying things (and players) out is well and truly over.

The only way the Whitecaps are going to get into the post season is by returning to what they once were.

Forward to the Past!

Whitecaps fall down the rabbit hole

“The time has come, the Walrus said,

      To talk of many things:

Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —

      Of cabbages — and kings —

And why the sea is boiling hot —

      And whether pigs have wings.”

There have been times this season when it really has felt as though we were through the looking glass when it came to Carl Robinson’s team selections but Saturday’s 2-0 defeat to the Colorado Rapids was probably the peak of Mad Hatterism.

Yes, yes I get that the heat and the travel and the altitude play havoc with the players but we watch football games not weather reports, arrival boards and barometers and anyway there’s a world of difference between losing games and losing them the way the Whitecaps have lost in both Dallas and Colorado.

Barely a shot in anger in either game (or the previous one in Houston to be fair) is hardly the stuff to inspire much hope in fans but, instead of pouring over the minutiae of a dreadful night in Denver, let’s just sit down and think of a number of impossible things that should never ever be tried again.

Pedro Morales as a number ten- By the twentieth minute Morales was already dropping deep to get the ball and so leaving Giles Barnes isolated up front. Maybe this was a poignant tribute to the Rivero era but it’s unclear what Robinson has disliked about the pairing of Kudo and Mezquida in attack.

Even without those two it must surely have been obvious that having a number ten who closed down the opposition defence and stayed in touch with the centre forward was preferable to one who does neither of those things.

In a recent interview the coach said that there were “no stars in his team” but it sure feels as though Morales is being accommodated no matter how he performs whereas others are shunted in and out of the team no matter how well they do

New players should fit into the team not the other way around-  I doubt anybody thinks that the signings of Edgar and Barnes are anything but good things, but the decision to throw them both into the deep end against one of the toughest teams to play on the road seemed overly optimistic of their attributes.

Even stranger given that playing Barnes meant that the whole forward line was revamped and even more strange given that playing Edgar completely rearranged an already uncertain backline.

And I refer you to the “no stars in the team” remark to try to explain why Kendall Waston stayed in his regular position whereas Tim Parker (who has been the better central defender this season) got shunted to the right back role where he struggled all evening.

Was it really an surprise to see that back four constantly confused about who should be where and when and why? (That’s a rhetorical question by the way).

If it’s not working make a change- Seriously.

The Whitecaps never once looked like scoring throughout the whole of the first half so why give the same lineup and the same tactics fifteen minutes to make thing better in the second? (Another  rhetorical question).

It was somewhat ironic to see the Rapids score within seconds of the obligatory sixtieth minute substitution but, once again, fifteen minutes had been wasted hoping that the thing that didn’t work for forty five minutes suddenly would.

Two defensive midfielders- Just move on from it. It’s clearly not helping the defence and the inclusion of both Laba and Jacobson means that at least three or four other players have to be shifted to their les optimal positions.

Other than that things went quite well and I’m sure the Whitecaps can put themselves back together (Humpty Dumpty style) in time for the tough looking run in to the end of the season.

Time then for the Soccer Shorts Player Ratings (sigh).

Ousted-5, Parker-4, Edgar-4, Waston-4, De Jong-4, Laba-5 Jacobson-5*, Bolaños-4, Morales-4, Techera-4, Barnes-4  (Mezquida-5, Davies-5)

Vancouver Whitecaps foundations looking shaky

If there was ever a game to highlight the structural issues facing the Vancouver Whitecaps this season then the 2-2 tie with the Colorado rapids at BC Place on Saturday evening was probably the one.

The Whitecaps began the game well, got an early goal through a Kendall Waston header and then proceeded to play good possession football for the next ten minutes or so.

Gradually though the visitors eased their way back into the game and by the half hour mark were peppering David Ousted’s goal with shots and the first worrying aspect of the night was that nobody from the Whitecaps (either on or off the field) seemed capable (or even interested) in changing the flow of the game.

The team were crying out for either a tactical switch or just a leader to get in a few faces and clear a few heads but there was nothing and nobody forthcoming.

Carl Robinson was actually offered the chance to make a tactical change when Kekuta Manneh picked up an injury in the forty-third minute but instead he opted for as “like for like” a substitution as possible by bringing on Erik Hurtado.

Blas Perez had barely connected with Manneh all evening and was destined to have the same misfortune with Hurtado.

The second half began as the first ended with Colorado creating chances and Vancouver hoping that none of those chances actually amounted to anything but, inevitably, one finally did as Kevin Doyle slid home a nice through ball in the fifty-ninth minute.

Robinson opted to bring on Nicolas Mezquida shortly after that setback but it wasn’t until Colorado’s Eric Miller picked up a slightly harsh red card twenty minutes from time that the Whitecaps did finally wake up and take the game to the visitors.

The second most worrying aspect of the night is that it really shouldn’t take an opponent being sent off to jolt a home team into action and even then the Whitecaps needed another marginal refereeing call to give Cristian Techera the chance to slot home his first goal of the season from the penalty spot.

So three minutes of normal time left and the opposition down to ten men. No problem right?

Well the third worrying aspect of the night was that despite suffering that heartbreaking last minute goal against Toronto FC last week the Whitecaps still didn’t have enough wherewithal to see out the game and (somewhat astonishingly) were once again outmanned in their own penalty area in the final minute of stoppage time.

Those who don’t learn the from the mistakes of history are condemned to repeat them and teams that keep giving up late goals in that fashion need to get back to the very basics of the game pretty quickly.

It’s hard to know how they turn this season around from here.

Maybe a couple of signings will help the cause, but the overwhelming impression from this game was that either the players don’t really understand the system they are meant to be playing or they do understand the system but just aren’t buying into it.

Either way the mental lethargy from everyone concerned is getting pretty close to derailing the season completely.

Time then for the Soccer Shorts player ratings.

Ousted-6, Smith-5, Waston-6, Parker-6, Harvey-5, Laba-5, Jacobson-5, Morales-4, Bolaños-7*, Manneh-5, Perez-5 (Hurtado-5, Mezquida-6, Techera-6) 

 

 

Vancouver Whitecaps: Think of a word

What a strange old season it has been for the Vancouver Whitecaps so far.

A heady mix of goal fests, injuries, suspensions and trades with the promise of even more to come, but if we were to stop for a moment and reflect on all that has happened thus far how would we define it?

Or, more specifically and purely to get out of this section of the piece, consider this question.

“If you had to use one word to sum up the season so far what would that word be?”

There’s lots of contenders I guess, “Chaotic”, “Exciting”, “Disappointing”, “Confusing” and there are certainly no right answers (although saying something like “Elephant” would definitely count as a wrong answer).

Anyway the word I have chosen is “Focus”.

“Focus” because for the first third of the year it felt as though the Whitecaps were under the specific scrutiny of the MLS Disciplinary Committee as cards and retro suspensions were handed out with abandoned glee (or gleeful abandon).

“Focus” because you really do have to mentally squint to try and see just what this team actually is as all that aforementioned disruption has meant almost no consistency in team selection or tactics.

Are the Whitecaps an attacking team or just a team that is not very good at defending? Are they tactically flexible or just tactically undisciplined?

But mostly “Focus” because that’s the attribute which has been notably absent this season.

That’s evident on an individual level as a series of “unforced errors” from a number of players has cost the team vital points and it’s been evident on a team level given how they seem to drift in and out of games with a capriciousness as unpredictable mayfly on methamphetamine.

That lack of focus was never more evident than in the final seconds of the Voyageurs Cup when at least half the team appeared to mentally switch off before the final whistle had been blown, but that’s the canary in the coal mine rather than the gas leak itself as we frequently see intensity levels fluctuate throughout the ninety minutes.

So what’s the cause and what’s the cure?

There has to be some responsibility placed with the players on the field. There’s enough experience to not allow peaks and troughs of performance to become the norm but (perhaps David Ousted aside) they seem to lack an organizing presence; a player who can keep everybody on point no matter what the circumstance.

Yet on field showings are often the result of off the field culture and while none of us on the outside can ever truly know what the locker room vibe is really like there are times when it feels as though Carl Robinson is still a little too close to his playing days.

Like a policeman turned judge he’s so used to leaning toward one side of an argument that the other side tends to fade into the shadows.

Keeping players happy is an honourable goal (which clearly has specific benefits) but keeping players happy shouldn’t be attained at the expense of team results.

A player has had a dreadful first half? Take him off and don’t give him another fifteen minutes to redeem himself.

Striker not scoring? Give somebody else a chance in the role.

Star defender making mistakes? Bench him the same way you would bench a second string player.

And yet maybe there are emerging signs that the tide of Robinson’s brain waves is turning? The “message” sent to Kekuta Manneh by leaving him out of the eighteen for the game in LA felt a very un-Robinson like public dressing down for a player and the mooted moves of experienced Canadian internationals into the team may well indicate a desire to tackle that on field inconsistency with the presence of somebody who has “been there and done that”.

Maybe as Robinson drifts further from his playing days he will start to think more and more with his coach’s head than with his player’s heart and the good news is that mental lapses are probably easier and quicker to remedy in a player than physical limitations will ever be.

So the message for the second half of the season?

Focus!

 

So farewell then Octavio Rivero

The Uruguayan striker is heading to Chile to join club side Colo Colo to bring to an end a strangely dissatisfying spell with the Vancouver Whitecaps.

Rivero began his time in Vancouver like a house on fire but then continued by being more like a house in which the central heating is governed by a frustratingly capricious thermostat; cold when you don’t want it to be but offering enough spells of warmth to make a disgruntled homeowner believe that a replacement isn’t really needed.

But it was and ever since the mooted Kei Kamara move of earlier in the season it’s probably the case that both parties were willing to take any move that fitted.

After all why would Rivero stick around if there was the possibility of him being shipped somewhere against his will?

Better to head to Chile and control his own fate than to wake up one morning to find he’s booked on a flight to DC or Salt Lake City.

But how will we judge his time in Vancouver?

The biggest issue is that he just isn’t a natural finisher (and certainly not a clinical one) as he almost always looked to simply steer the ball on target rather than to make the save as difficult as possible for the goalkeeper and the proof of that is implied by the number of headed chances he has had saved this season.

Good for him for getting into the right positions to create the chance but truthfully he could have had three or four more goals if those headers had been aimed at the corner of the net rather than the safe centre.

His hold up play was generally very good but his first and second touches aren’t always so assured and too often he lost possession for the team a little too easily and was reduced to appealing forlornly for a foul that was never going to be given.

And yet for all those faults it’s hard to dislike Rivero as a player; he worked tirelessly whenever he was on the field and never once gave up on his role as the first line of defence.

It may even be the case that in a team of better players (or in a team of players of a similar ability to his own) he becomes an incredibly useful striker, but in MLS if you’re a Designated Player then you have to be one of the better players and you have to make those around you look good.

Without that DP tag then perhaps Rivero would have eased through his troubles with greater ease and there would certainly have been less pressure on him to produce goals on a regular basis and probably less pressure on Robinson to select him even when he was clearly out of form.

In retrospect what the Whitecaps got with Rivero was exactly what he was when he signed with them; an intermittent scorer of goals who could do a job on the field even when he wasn’t scoring but his failure to progress beyond that level eventually meant his stay had to be limited.

Now the interest turns to who Carl Robinson brings in as his replacement.

Signing a young DP has a potentially enormous upside because if you snag a rising star at a fairly early age the subsequent transfer fee alone could fund a solid rebuild of the team but the downside is the risk that youthful promise fails to transcend into anything more and that’s particularly true once you take the risk of moving a player into a new league.

Time will tell if this experience has made the coach more inclined to sign experience (be it in terms of age or from within the League) in the Designated Player slot but Rivero’s time in Vancouver can probably be defined as “a worthwhile experiment which ultimately failed”.

Best of luck to him in the next phase of his career.

 

Glass half full for the Whitecaps?

The 1-0 victory for Toronto FC over the Vancouver Whitecaps in the first leg of The Voyageurs Cup is a result that probably leaves both sides in a state of emotional flux.

The home side probably feel they could have got a second but will be equally relieved they didn’t concede an important away goal whereas Vancouver will be pleased to have survived an early second half onslaught from TFC but must be ruing their inability to find the net.

All to play for at BC Place next week then.

It was no surprise to see Carl Robinson ring the lineup changes but perhaps it was a surprise to see Kah and Waston both starting in central defence and Teibert and McKendry both getting the nod in midfield, but the Whitecaps were the better team in the first half and were unlucky to fall behind to a deflected Giovinco shot.

The second half was a different story however as TFC gradually turned the screw and we were once again faced with the sight of Octavio Rivero becoming more and more isolated as the rest of the team began to sit deeper and deeper inviting pressure on to them.

Robinson doesn’t always get his substitutes right but this time he did as the introduction of Pérez for an ineffective Morales and Manneh for Davies almost immediately wrestled the momentum away from the home team.

The Whitecaps never really looked like fashioning a clear opening from that point on but neither did Toronto and the game ended with both sides torn between the Scylla of pushing men forward and the Charybdis of leaving men back.

No wonder there was no further breakthrough.

For the Whitecaps there was a decent outing from Ben McKendry, a much needed one for Sam Adekugbe and fifteen year old Alphonso Davies once again didn’t seem completely out of place among a field of professionals.

It was also good (and a relief) to see both Waston and Kah have solid and uneventful games at the back and any team that nullifies Giovinco to one lucky strike over ninety minutes is doing something right.

Carl Robinson can take a fair degree of satisfaction from the evening; he rested important players, gave returning players valuable minutes and his team are still in a good position to retain the Cup.

But that lack of away goal may be the one thing to really play on his mind when he looks back at this game.

Time then for the Soccer Shorts player ratings.

Tornaghi-6, Aird-5, Adekugbe-6*, Waston-6, Kah-6, Teibert-5, McKendry-6, Bolaños-6, Morales-5, Davies-5, Rivero-5