Tag: Russell Berrisford

A sit down with “The Red Card Brigade”

With the news that Mark Clattenburg will soon be moving to China and that Howard Webb has been headhunted by MLS to oversee the introduction of video technology it’s clear that referees are the emerging stars of the global game.

Even so I was slightly startled to hear of the formation of an Official Supporters Group dedicated to an individual match official.

The “Red Card Brigade” have announced that they will be following MLS PRO referee Kevin Stott at all of his games this season and a mixture of amusement and inquisitiveness led me to meet the founder of the group, Connor Blanton, at a British themed pub in downtown Los Angeles.

He was easy to spot of course, dressed as he was in his replica yellow MLS officiating jersey and my first question to him was the obvious one.

“Why?”

“Why not?” he laughed taking a sip of Harp lager. “But seriously the game is moving further and further away from the grassroots fans and it just feels as though referees are the last bastion of a culture worth saving”

“They get paid a pittance and get nothing but abuse. They’re the anti-heroes that the game needs”

“But why Stott in particular?”

Blanton shrugged “I saw him officiate a Galaxy game last year and that was it for me. I guess you don’t really choose your favourite referee they choose you”

“So how many are there in this group of supporters?”

“Almost two hundred now. It’s taken off way more than I thought it would. It seems to have really tapped into a need”

“But what will you do at the games?”

“Stand up and sing like any other group of fans. We’ve adapted a good number of traditional football songs to suit our purpose”

“Such as?

“‘Booked in a minute, you’re getting booked in a minute’, ‘All we are saying is send someone off’ and my personal favourite ‘Kevin Stott is magic, he wears a magic hat, he saw some holding in the box and said I’m having that, you may play in yellow or you may play in white, Stotty doesn’t give a shit ‘cos he is always right'”

“Won’t that antagonise the home fans?”

Blanton laughed “I hope so! We’ll be like a constant away presence at every game. It will really add to the atmosphere. And I’m looking forward to Kevin getting a Cascadia derby because then it will be three different supporters groups in the stadium at the same time. We’ve got plans to unveil a TIFO of him sending off a player from both teams. That would be mental!”

“That could lead to trouble though?”

“It’s not that aspect I’m too worried about funnily enough” he said finishing his pint “It’s groups that follow other refs that are the danger. In a preseason friendly we went to watch Portland play Minnesota because Kevin was the fourth official. Problem was that there was a group of ultras there from ‘The Whistle Blowers’ who follow Edvin Jurisevic who was refereeing the game”

“It was all quite friendly banter at first but when Jurisevic missed an obvious penalty call we all starting shouting ‘How clear do you want the foul? How clear do you want the foul?’ and it all kicked off. Honestly, MLS is going to have start thinking about who it pairs up as ref and fourth official or it could get  really serious. No way do we want trouble but we’re not going to let Stotty take shit from some other group”

“So there’s other groups? How many?”

“Quite a few. There’s ‘The Geiger Counters’, that’s self evident who they follow, ‘The Crazy Gang’ who follow Baldomero Toledo, ‘Kelly’s Heroes’ for Alan Kelly and ‘The Moby Dicks’ who support Ismail Elfath. There’s others too but they are the main ones at the moment”

I thanked Connor for his time and bid my farewell to him just as he was pulling a red card out of his pocket and waving it vociferously in the direction of a group of drunken youths at the bar.

And as he was being pummeled mercilessly to the ground I couldn’t help but wonder if he and his group weren’t actually on to something. Maybe following a referee is as close as anyone can really get these days to what first drew so many of us to the game?

The sense of camaraderie, the love of an underdog and a sub culture that’s accessible to only a chosen few.

But whatever any of us think about the subject it will certainly be a development worth following in the coming years.

Vancouver Whitecaps bullish after tie in New York

The CONCACAF Champion’s League quarter-finals exist in some strange kind of hinterland for the MLS clubs involved; existing as they do just at the end of the pre-season but just before the regular season gets under way.

That makes the games both hard to predict and even harder to parse for harbingers of what is to come.

Nevertheless the Whitecaps 1-1 tie with the New York Red Bulls was both a pleasing result (even more so considering the home team were given a penalty kick and the advantage of an extra man after Cristian Techera had been dismissed) and offered at least few clues about what to expect from Vancouver in 2017.

The most positive aspect was the somewhat constant movement of the forward line with Hurtado, Manneh, Davies and Techera frequently switching positions and at least giving the Red Bulls backline something more to think about than a solitary striker.

It’s a little easier to see Fredy Montero fitting into that version of 4-2-3-1 than those previously envisioned.

Not surprisingly the pace of both Manneh and Davies always offered a threat on the break and if Manneh could just learn to play the right pass at the right time he would be a guaranteed game winner more often than not.

Defensively the Whitecaps were solid too (or at least more solid than many of us feared) with Parker and Waston looking more like the effective 2015 pairing than the porous 2016 version.

The worrying aspects remain the lack of any creativity or link up play from the defensive midfielders with both Laba and Teibert offering next to nothing going forward and while that may be forgivable on the road it still remains to be seen how dangerous the Whitecaps are when faced with an opponent who sits back and negates their pace.

The red card and the penalty kick (both good calls) also offered a painful reminder of the indiscipline of last year, but at least the ten men held on and that should instill a little more confidence in the ability to close out games in a way they were barely able to do in 2016.

It’s all set up very nicely for the game at BC Place next Thursday and if the Whitecaps can come out of that game advancing to the semi-finals then the mood around the whole club should get both a little lighter and a little more forgiving.

It’s ludicrously early in the season (I mean really, really ludicrously early) to be talking about a game having so much importance but that’s the way it is.

The positive news is that both the result and the performance in New Jersey offered somewhat unexpected glimmers of hope for what is to come.

It’s the hope that kills you of course, but at least it’s a relatively pain free death (until the final moments anyway).

Time for the Soccer Shorts player ratings!

Ousted-6, Nerwinski-5, Parker-7*, Waston-7, Harvey-6, Laba-5, Teibert-5, Techera-5, Manneh-6, Davies-6, Hurtado-5 (Barnes-6, Williams-5)

 

 

 

 

Vancouver Whitecaps: Does the captain matter?

With the Whitecaps still to announce who will replace Pedro Morales as the team captain it at least begs the question of whether it’s at all relevant who is in possession of the armband.

As is so often the case around here the answer to that question is “it depends” because context is everything.

There are some teams where it really doesn’t matter.

Make any player captain of the current Juventus or Chelsea squads for example and it won`t make a difference because they are both experienced, well-balanced squads with clear ideas about what thy are expected to do on the field.

But the Whitecaps didn’t fit that description in 2016 and they likely won’t in 2017 either so who Carl Robinson chooses for the role actually will matter. Not least because of the slightly bizarre behaviour we’ve seen from Morales himself on social media recently.

It’s hard not to conclude that Pedro was a destabilizing presence last year and that, at the very least, a small number of players will have lost respect for him.

That loss of respect may even have seeped through to the coach who selected him and you can bet the players will be a little more interested in who is chosen than would normally be the case.

Will Robinson once again opt for simply naming the highest paid player as team captain? That seems unlikely given that Fredy Montero has only just arrived at the club which leaves the coach with a far more interesting decision.

In his ideal world he would probably have named David Edgar to the position; experienced, vocal and not at the club long enough to have fallen into one clique or another.

But Edgar’s long-term injury takes that option off the table, so the choice will now have to be made from one of last season’s regular starters with Harvey, Waston and Ousted being the most obvious contenders.

There are issues with each one though.

Ousted’s public spat with Pedro must have put a few noses out of place among friends of the latter. So selecting Ousted would put Robinson firmly on one side of the camp and risk exacerbating the tensions of last year.

Waston’s disciplinary record doesn’t bode well in a potential captain and furthermore if any player needed to focus solely on their own play this year then that player would be Waston.

That leaves Jordan Harvey who has the positives of being likeable and honest in post game interviews (something that the language barrier made it impossible for Morales to do) but the negatives are largely that he isn’t the most vocal of players on the pitch.

Tries his heart out sure, can organize a defence definitely, but probably not an imposing enough figure to take control of the whole team.

Still, his work rate would at least be a good example to the rest and given the somewhat limited other options available to him Robinson may have to conclude that if his captain isn’t going to be a transformative figure on the field he can at least pick the player who would do the least harm.

That looks to be Jordan Harvey.

 

Whitecaps fall flat in Portland

Let’s start with the traditional caveat that preseason games should always be taken with more than just a pinch of salt.

But even so the Vancouver Whitecaps 2-1 loss to the Portland Timbers on Wednesday evening was so replete with familiar issues from last season that it probably should have been preceded by some kind of trigger warning for long-suffering fans.

So in the spirit of the performance itself let’s just throw some random thoughts at the wall and see if any of them make any sense whatsoever.

There’s nothing wrong with sending out a team to play defensive football; many of the world’s best coaches do exactly that.

But “defensive” doesn’t just mean sitting back and letting the opposition attack. It means a level of organization in both the defence and midfield and it means at least some degree of connection between the midfield and the forward line.

There was none of that against the Timbers.

As was the case last year the Whitecaps looked like a team that had simply been sent out to play rather than one that was being coached or managed.

In other words, players were playing as individuals rather than as a team with Laba charging around the middle, Hurtado isolated up front, the full backs offering little in the way of attacking threat or defensive cover, the wide players offering the same, Barnes playing in a position that clearly doesn’t suit him and Parker and Waston failing to function as a unit.

Consequently once the first goal went in it was clear that the players lost any faith or confidence in what they were doing.

That still doesn’t explain the appalling sense of stasis that emanated from all quarters however with the defence content to stand and admire Portland’s build up play and the forwards equally content to stand and admire when one of their own had the ball.

It’s one of the basic tenets of football that movement is key to success so it’s hard to know if the lack of it was down to players either not knowing where they should be moving to or simply a lack of interest in doing so.

At the end of the game Timbers coach Caleb Porter opined that “In some ways the game was too easy” to be a useful work out for his players and if that isn’t as damning a comment as could be made then I don’t know what is.

The counterpoint to all this negativity is that both Montero and Bolaños were missing and they are undoubtedly the team’s two quality players, but that absence of quality should have made the rest of the team concentrate on the basics even more.

The first game of the Champion’s League tie is less than a week away and a good result there would change everything but, as of now, the Whitecaps look to be as adrift and as rudderless as they were last year.

 

 

Fredy or not here he comes!

So finally the long and seemingly painful search for a proven goal scorer has come to and end for the Vancouver Whitecaps with the loan signing of Fredy Montero from Chinese side Tianjin Teda FC.

This being MLS the details of the actual deal are about as murky and convoluted as an Oliver Stone movie but at least the former Seattle Sounder has a bona fide record of putting the ball into the back of the net.

The big question now is whether the Whitecaps can get the best out of him.

Carl Robinson has already said that he intends to use Montero as a number nine which begs the question “Exactly what kind of number nine?”.

Play him the way that Octavio Rivero was played (unsplendid isolation) and the Colombian will likely end up as a diminutive tribute act to the Uruguayan; all rolling eyes and forlornly outstretched arms.

But if Robinson can figure out a way to get players in support of Montero then the forward line could be formidable indeed.

And the positive news is that he now has exactly the kind of players to do just that with Reyna, Manneh, Barnes, Techera, Bolaños, Davie, Mezquida et al all far happier going forward than tracking back.

It’s debateable whether the coach will be willing to grant his team that kind of freedom but he could use his favoured double defensive midfield set up to simply allow all those ahead of them free reign.

It’s an exciting prospect for the fan but it’s probably something of a pipe dream.

For one thing Robinson just isn’t that kind of coach and for another the disappointing nature of last season may well instill even more initial conservatism into both him and the players.

Perhaps if he were given a cast iron guarantee that the fans and the media would show patience over the first few weeks if things didn’t quite work out as promised then Robinson would be willing to take more of a risk, but the memory of 2016 and Champion’s League qualifier against the Red Bulls cuts that slack down to almost nothing.

So we’ll probably see Montero playing with a high number ten with the two wide men operating as much as midfielders as forwards.

Not as great from an aesthetic point of view but at least a step up (both literally and metaphorically) from last season.

 

Eight, nine or ten for the Whitecaps?

Imagine for a moment that you’re the one in charge of all the big decisions for the Vancouver Whitecaps.

It’s already been a busy off-season; you’ve given the go ahead for little blue triangles to be added to the new white home shirt and you’re confident that you’ve hired the very best people to handle the streaming of the pre-season games.

But now you’re faced with the biggest challenge yet.

Financial restraints mean only one Designated Player can be added to the team and owners want you to decide if that should be a number eight, a number nine or a number ten.

Despite being  somewhat appalled at their slightly reductive way of looking at tactical positioning you set about pondering their question.

You first remember that a very briulliant blogger once argued that Matias Laba either can’t or won’t be asked to play the purely defensive midfield role so that would make a true box to box midfielder both a bonus and a liability to the team.

True, the team could definitely do with a player who added to the numbers going forward but if that was at the cost of leaving the back four as exposed as it was last year that could mean good money spent simply to stand still.

Anyway, it’s a truth universally acknowledged that Vancouver just need a good finisher to make everything okay isn’t it?

Well it kind of is, but while the Whitecaps definitely created chances last season a whole bunch of those chances were created by work rate and pace rather than creativity.

Slot a pure finisher into the lineup and it’s just possible that a numbder of those chances may suddenly disappear making his presence a lot less effective than we all presume it would be.

So perhaps a creative presence at number ten is the answer?

It’s certainly one area where Carl Robinson hasn’t had much success since he took over the coaching role with his two main options either being Pedro Morales (who lacked the quickness of short passing and instinct to get forward) and Nicolas Mezquida (who lacks the inate creativity).

So simply putting a genuinely effective number ten should solve all the problems?

Again what we really come back to is the way Robinson likes to set up his team; he seems to prefer “and a half” players.

In other words he likes a wide man who plays narrow and he definitely likes forwards who can play anywhere along the front line; somewhere between a nine and a ten.

But when he does play a straight up forward man then he prefers him to play facing the rest of the team rather than the opposition goal meaning that he becomes the de facto creative hub for the rest of the attack to play off.

So if the coach genuinely likes these “portmanteau” players then concentrating on signing their exact opposite may be detrimental to the team in the long run.

That means the best answer you can give to the question of whether to sign a number eight, nine or ten is to give no answer at all.

Good work!

 

Darkness before noon for the Whitecaps?

In one of his surprisingly numerous interviews Bob Dylan once referred to great songs as being “like the shadow of a church”.

Now what he meant by that was either “I’m just going to say something randomly enigmatic and hope I get away with it” or he meant that songs don’t create the concrete (in both the literal and metaphorical sense) emotions that an actual church, with all its history and implications, does but rather that the shadow of a church is both more ephemeral and less imposing.

More open to individual interpretation and changing moods.

The same can probably be said of preseason games and they are often barely even a shadow of a football match and they can certainly never be considered great art but the Whitecaps’ 1-1 tie with Minnesota United in Portland on Thursday evening could at least be described as the kind of biting satire the world so desperately needs right now.

Unfortunately, the satire was aimed firmly at the Whitecaps themselves as the game almost perfectly encapsulated all that was wrong with the team last year.

A very bright start failed to produce a goal and after about twenty-five minutes Vancouver suddenly seemed to run out of ideas.

That was mostly due to the lack of link play between the midfield and the forward line and a continued over-reliance on pace over guile.

They then began the second-half with the old familiar torpour of last year until Erik Hurtado produced a startling header.

It was largely startling because he was actually defending a corner and somehow managed, with literally no Minnesota player with six yards of him, to glance the ball perfectly passed a startled David Ousted (See, I told you it was startling).

At least that sparked the Whitecaps back to life and a Russell Teibert laser levelled the score to earn his team a share of the spoils that don’t really exist.

Despite all that negativity though there were still a number of reasons to be a little more positive about the prospects for 2017.

Yordy Reyna looked to be a bright prospect going forward and Matias Laba already looks way ahead of where he was this time last year (Which was actually still in Argentina now that I think about it).

There was also the absences of Nicolas Mezquida and Christian Bolaños to consider with the latter being the only current player capable of providing the guile to make all that pace effective.

We’ll know more as the preseason unfolds with each game becoming more significant than this one.

But nothing means nothing and the main something we can take away from a rain-sodden Portland is that things haven’t yet changed all that much from 2016.

Vancouver Whitecaps: Five milestones to consider

There are only two things I know to be undeniably true.

The first is that any character in a historical drama on TV who starts coughing in Episode One will be dead of tuberculosis by Episode Three at the latest.

The second is that anybody looking at a new Major League Soccer schedule will utter the phrase “Well, that could have been better”.

But I’m a firm believer in the philosophy that if life gives you lemons then you take those lemons and throw them really hard at somebody else until they at least feel even worse than you do.

So with that in mind let’s throw five lemons at the schedule and see if we can’t bruise at least a few of those dates into submission.

The first two home games- Normally it would be ridiculous hyperbole to claim that a Champions League game against the Red Bulls and a League opener against the Union were crucial but the Whitecaps were so bad at BC Place last season that they almost can’t afford to maintain that negative momentum.

If they tumble out of the Champions League and also fail to pick up three points the rot could set in before the clocks have even sprang forward.

Four road games in a row- MLS loves to send teams on expanded road trips and Vancouver get their first taste of this in April when they face Portland, Montreal, Colorado and Houston.

By this time we’ll at least know more about how the team is being set up and although the playoff structure makes it tough to find yourself behind the eight ball this early in the season a bad run of results in these games could at least see them approaching the eight ball with a hint of trepidation.

Four home games in a row- It really is feast or famine with MLS isn’t it? That road trip is then followed by home games against Kansas, D.C United, Atlanta and Dallas.

One of the main flaws with the team in 2016 was that they always seemed to fail to capitalize on their successes, so if they do manage to get a decent amount of points from those road games they need to build on that at B.C. Place.

In short they need to play with far more intensity over ninety minutes than they ever managed to do last year.

August and September- It’s become traditional for the Whitecaps to view these months in the same way a wounded tuna fish views a hungry shark.

Why that is the case is one of the great mysteries of the modern world but it may just be as simple as other teams working out Vancouver and Vancouver being unable to adapt to that problem.

Thus far Carl Robinson hasn’t shown himself to be a master tactician within games so let’s hope he’s used the off season polish his coaching skills.

The final run in- Four of the last fives games are away from BC Place so we could be left looking at a team that is slightly worse off than it appears to be.

If the Whitecaps are hovering around the red playoff line come the end of September then they are more likely to sneak into the post-season than they are to steam into it (and even more likely to miss out altogether).

Again it will come down to how hard Robinson pushes his team before this spell of games and whether he and they refuse to settle for less than they could actually get as they seemed to do far too often in 2016.

So that’s just a few periods of the season that could/might/won’t be crucial to how we feel at the end of the campaign.

But at least we’re nearly at the start now!

 

 

Yordy Reyna: Perusing what we know

Being a fan of the Whitecaps in this particular off season has been a little like being a truffle pig in a world without truffles.

But now at least we have something with Marc Weber reporting that the club have signed Yordy Reyna from the Austrian side FC Red Bull Salzburg.

It’s  true that all that most of us have to go on is Reyna’s Wikipedia page and some YouTube highlights but that feels like a whole plethora of truffles compared to what we had before (Yes I’m aware that the correct collective noun for truffles is “heap” but Plethora of Truffles sounds like a Prog Rock band who would have released an eponymous album in 1973 before splitting up following a particularly poorly received set at the Oxford Real Ale Festival).

So what can we learn and, more importantly what can we speculate on, given the meagre fare available?

Here are a x scenarios (Memo to self: come back and edit this when you run out of ideas, but definitely try to get passed one).

Giles Barnes is on the way out- Reyna looks to be a very similar style of player and will definitely mean less of a hit on the salary cap. And anyway, how many  “Is he really a forward or a winger” players do the team actually need?

The team needs another “Is he really a forward or a winger?” player- If the plan is to switch to a 4-3-3/4-2-1-3 in 2017 then a front three of Reyna, Barnes and Manneh could be a nightmare to defend against given that each is capable of playing anywhere  along the front line.

Position Bolaños centrally with Laba and Jacobson/Teibert as holding cover and it’s suddenly not inconceivable that the Whitecaps could score some goals and, with Hurtado, Davies and Techera all capable of playing in that forward position, Carl Robinson won’t be too hampered by the inevitable injuries and suspensions that will come along.

The system stays the same but with Bolaños as the number ten- The tried and trusted (by Robinson anyway) 4-2-3-1 could simply be tweaked to push Reyna or Barnes on to the right and allow Bolaños to become the main creative hub of the team.

Any other scenarios though would feel like wild speculation rather than distinct possibilities.

4-4-2? It could work but it’s hard to see the coach wanting his team to be that open (especially on the road).

3-5-2/5-3-2? Playing three central defenders is the fashionable tactic right now but any chance of that happening probably went out of the window with the long term injury to David Edgar.

It’s hard to imagine there won’t be at least one more signing (though at least two are probably needed) but as things stand the current starting eleven can at least be graded as “promising”.

Definitely not “great” and it’s open to question if it could actually deliver on any promises made but at least it wouldn’t be absolutely terrible.

 

 

Vancouver Whitecaps: Five to look for in 2017

With the off-season awash with new signings and exciting transfer speculation for the Vancouver Whitecaps it’s been tempting to forget the players who will still be here from the last campaign.

So who will be the 2016 players who need to make an impact in 2017?

Christian Bolaños- It’s arguable that Bolaños was the best player for the Whitecaps last year but it’s also arguable that he slightly disappointed.

That says a lot about the season but it does also offer genuine hope for the coming year.

Bolaños is a smart enough player to have figured out where he (individually) went wrong and it’s just possible that he will have the measure of MLS in 2017.

How good he could be is hard to quantify but, given a fair wind and the right tactics, it’s not inconceivable that he could hit double figures in both goals and assists.

That’s a huge ask and even one of those figures would make a huge difference to the team but (as things currently stand) the Costa Rican is the most likely candidate to be the catalyst to kick-start the campaign.

Kendall Waston- Waston spent much of 2016 in a state of flux between failing to accept there was any issue with the way he was playing and walking to the locker room with yet another red card being waved in his direction.

If he’s learned that he needs to adjust his game at least somewhat (and if the Whitecaps can figure out a way to give him the protection from midfield he was lacking last year) then the loss of David Edgar won’t be felt as keenly.

But if Waston carries on diving into tackles regardless of the consequences then both he and us could face another long season of shortened matches for the big central defender.

Kekuta Manneh- If anybody’s stock rose at all in 2016 then it was Manneh’s as his absence made the heart grow fonder for his ability to run with the ball at pace.

If Manneh is back (and fully fit) then it will at least help to fill any tactical shortcomings which may still be lingering.

That’s probably not a good thing in the long run but Vancouver need a good start to the season to quell the overall sense of anxiety they all seem to experience when things don’t go their way.

Having Manneh in the starting eleven makes that good start at least a little bit more likely.

Alphonso Davies-  I’m not in the “Davies is the footballing Messiah” group of people but neither am I in the “He’s just a very naughty boy” group either.

He’s a good young player who needs to play as much football as possible at this stage of his career.

Whether he will get that as a member of the first team squad is open for debate but the concern is that a mixture of searching for the feel good factor and marketing clout will mean more of Davies sitting on the first team bench than being out on the field for WFC2.

Player X- Okay this doesn’t fit the remit of “players who were here in 2016” but his phantom presence hung around BC Place almost as strongly as the sense of futility felt by the forwards that were there.

And it’s almost unimaginable that the Whitecaps won’t announce the signing of a striker in the next couple of weeks (not completely unimaginable but almost) so let’s hope that he’s prepared for the level of scrutiny he will face because if there’s one area of the field that has been the bugbear of the MLS Whitecaps then it’s this position.

They’ve only found one consistent and reliable goal scorer in that time and he fled down south in a typically bizarre circumstance.

The next man on the chopping block doesn’t have to equal Camillo’s Golden Boot winning season but he does have to be somebody who fits the style of play and who can take the occasional half chance.

Get it right and the club will have found a poster boy for the city to love.

Get it wrong and we’re left with another season of watching balls being kicked squarely and firmly into the upper decks and we’ve all had quite enough of the experience thank you very much.