Vancouver Whitecaps – Page 25 – Soccer Shorts (The Director's Cut)

Whitecaps v Sounders: What did we learn?

The former England striker Gary Lineker was once asked if being a great goal scorer was about being in the right place at the right time.

“No” he replied “it’s about being in the right place all of the time”.

Fredy Montero didn’t do all that much in the Vancouver Whitecaps 2-1 win over the Seattle Sounders on Friday evening but twice he managed to find the right sliver of space to head the ball home from close range.

It’s been too long since the Whitecaps had that kind of player.

The game itself began with a “same old, same old” feeling for the home side as they conceded possession to the visitors and resorted to the kind of aimless long balls from the back that left Montero bereft of both support and hope.

It just seemed to be a matter of time before the quality inherent in the Seattle forward line got the breakthrough.

Then Cristian Techera began to find the space out wide to deliver in a couple of decent crosses and the momentum of the game changed ever so slightly.

Suddenly the Whitecaps hearts and intentions were in the right place and although it was neither pretty nor particularly effective they did at least begin to take the game to their opponents.

The second half began with a sense of openness that was inevitably going to lead to a goal and indeed it did (See! I told you!) when Bolaños spread the ball wide to Techera who delivered the perfect cross for Montero to head home.

The key to that goal wasn’t just the link play of Bolaños and Techera it was the fact that both Bolaños and Davies were in the box with Montero waiting for the ball to be delivered.

Marking Montero and two others is far harder than marking a solitary Montero and if Vancouver want to continue to get the best out of the Colombian then they need to to give him that kind of quality support on a regular basis.

The other major positives from the evening were the aforementioned link play of Bolaños and Techera (Who may well be on the way to forming an effective triumvirate with Montero) and the play of Parker and Waston who once again looked back to their old selves of two years ago.

There were negatives on display as well of course so let’s dwell on those for a short while.

Neither Laba nor Teibert offered any kind of effective attacking presence from the midfield and that’s just not sustainable over the long term.

And Carl Robinson may have to begin to consider Alphonso Davies as more of an impact substitute than a starting player because the poor kid looked both physically and mentally gassed at about the fifty minute mark.

The biggest concern though was the way the team completely lost their collective heads once Seattle did score and the final four minutes of added time were an exercise in hope over organisation in which hope only won by the merest of margins.

That sense of panic is probably to be expected given the way the team have played of late but it was a reminder of just how quickly this season could still fall spectacularly off the rails.

Still, the Whitecaps now have two consecutive home wins against Western Conference rivals under their belts which at least makes the upcoming four game road trip a less daunting prospect and if Robinson can convince his players (Or, more likely, the other way around) that taking the initiative in games isn’t necessarily the equivalent of signing your own death warrant then there is still a chance the season won’t be the disaster it’s already threatened to be.

Yes, I’m saying there’s a chance!

Time for the Soccer Shorts player ratings.

Ousted-6, Williams-6.5, Parker-7.5*, Waston-7.5, Harvey-6, Teibert-6, Laba-6, Techera-7, Davies-6, Bolaños-7, Montero-6.5 (Mezquida-6)

Vancouver Whitecaps: Well excuse me!

Just over a week spent in the land of Great Brexit meant that I missed seeing the defeats to Tigres and Real Salt Lake as they happened.

That was probably a blessing in many ways but it was also kind of interesting to view the games almost solely through the prism of social media because the people who follow the Whitecaps (Or at least the people who I follow who follow the Whitecaps) are a remarkably forgiving bunch on the whole.

Lose to Tigres: “That’s to be expected because it’s the Champion’s League game”.

Lose to Real Salt Lake: “That’s to be expected because the game was so close to the Champion’s League game”.

I may be paraphrasing slightly for dramatic effect but it’s still not too far away from the truth and if any group of players or any coach didn’t need this kind of forgiveness it’s the current Vancouver Whitecaps.

Perhaps behind closed doors Carl Robinson runs the whole operation with the kind of sadistic brutality of Sergeant Williams in the 1965 movie “The Hill” but all indications are that he runs them more in the style of Sergeant Wilson in the long running TV series “Dad’s Army” (Forgive the overly British references here I’ve only just got back!).

Let’s look at the evidence.

Last season Cristian Techera showed up for preseason clearly out of condition and never found any kind of form until the latter half of the campaign.

This season Robinson himself has admitted that Christian Bolaños was unfit when he arrived at training and when Kekuta Manneh was sent to Columbus Crew their coach, Gregg Berhalter eschewed playing him because, “We want to make sure he’s right and prepared and we did notice a little bit of a difference in I guess his stamina compared to our guys”.

All individual incidents for sure but individual incidents that hint at a culture aimed more at keeping the players happy than keeping them at their physical peak.

And do we really have to listen to Robinson list a series of excuses for yet another defeat before he then utters the deathless phrase “You know me, I don’t like to make excuses”?

Or listen to another player saying that the latest loss will “Only make us stronger” and is “Something we can learn from”?

Here’s a word to the wise; if you keep losing games of football then you’re not getting stronger and you’re not learning anything.

You’re just losing games of football.

The next five games already feel season defining given that they consist of a home game to Seattle followed by four tough road games and while the excuses are already built in to that agenda; injuries, travel, playing good teams (Got to love the last of those as it implies that having a good team is some kind of cheat mode) the Whitecaps could emerge from that spell already adrift of their much coveted sixth spot.

Maybe I’m wrong (Hopefully I’m wrong!) and this is just the jet lag talking and Vancouver are about to embark on a run of form that overturns everything that has gone before but, as of now, the Vancouver Whitecaps feel like a really fun place to be if you’re a player but not so great a place to be if you just want to watch the games.

That’s probably not sustainable as a business model and it’s definitely not sustainable as a way of achieving meaningful success on the field.

Unfortunately, unless Carl Robinson has some kind of unexpected epiphany (Though all epiphanies are unexpected I guess) the likelihood is that things will carry on as is for the forseeable future with the parity of MLS ensuring just enough points to keep the hopes of the playoffs mathematically alive until late summer and the inevitable fading away of yet another season.

As Sergeant Wilson himself would enquire of the coach and the organisation as a whole, “Do you think that’s wise?”

Vancouver Whitecaps v LA Galaxy: What did we learn?

Fair warning to you all that I watched the majority of the Vancouver Whitecaps 4-2 win over the LA Galaxy on my phone while waiting to board a flight to the UK so the insights contained within will be those of a man both jet lagged and uninformed.

Maybe that’s the magic bullet I’ve been looking for?

Whatever the case I won’t allow being in England to influence my perspective in any way but cor blimey guvnor it weren’t half smashing to use me old apple pies to have a gander at them there fellas using their plates of meat so well.

Anyway, what did we learn?

Carl Robinson proves his critics right- One possible reading of the game is that the coach had been right all along with the formation he was playing, it just needed time to bed in.

The other, less charitable, reading is that everybody else was right all along and that the team needed to play in a far more proactive manner (especially at home).

This was certainly helped by the Galaxy’s strange compulsion to make the game as open as possible but even so the Whitecaps actually got men forward from the midfield and perhaps the most unexpected consequence of the Tony Tchani signing is that he allowed Matias Laba to get forward rather than the other way around.

It’s ludicrously early to be making any kind of relevant assessments but if Laba suddenly finds the will and the way to get into the opposition penalty area on a regular basis then that’s nothing but good news.

Selection headaches ahoy!– Brek Shea’s suspension gave Cristian Techera the chance to start a game and boy did he take that chance.

Techera hasn’t looked that good since he first arrived in Vancouver and it was a reminder of just how effective he can be as an attacking presence.

Maybe the Manneh trade has either invigorated or terrified the Uruguayan (nobody wants to wake up to find themselves on a plane to Columbus) but whatever the cause Techera should have moved ahead of Shea in the starting eleven reckoning after Saturday.

Shea will undoubtedly start against Tigres on Wednesday and so he has a chance to make a counter-claim but if Robinson doesn’t reward Techera with more minutes then we may well be back to the unmotivated bug of yester season.

There are still issues- Of course there are; one win does not make a summer after all.

In the first half the Whitecaps all but lost their way after the non-call on the Davies PK decision and the first LA goal and, after a very bright start, were somewhat grateful to get back into the locker room just one goal to the bad.

That hints at the still lingering suspicion of a soft underbelly at the heart of the team (Why is the underbelly near the heart anyway? They need medical help stat!) but hopefully that particular flaw will be partially remedied by the memory of achieving a come from behind win in such thrilling fashion.

Erik Hurtado’s attempt at a “Beckham”- We must never speak of this again.

Time for the (belated) Soccer Shorts player ratings.

Ousted- 5.5, Williams-6.5, harvey-6, Waston-6, Parker-6, Laba-7, Jacobson-6.5, Davies-6.5, Techera-7.5*, Bolaños-6.5, Hurtado- 5.5 (Montero-6)

So farewell then Kekuta Manneh

The news that Kekuta Manneh has been traded to the Columbus Crew for Tony Tchani and some imaginary salary cap money probably comes with both a sense of surprise and a sense of the inevitable.

Surprise because both clubs kept the deal close to their chests until the official announcement and inevitability because Manneh had seemed a disconsolate figure for much of the season; a man set apart from the ebb and flow of the team dynamics.

But now that the deal has gone down what are we to make of it?

From the Whitecaps point of view Tony Tchani fills a much needed hole since a genuine box to box midfielder has been as rare in Vancouver as a Kokanee drinking hipster and (assuming Carl Robinson allows him to play with the freedom to get forward) the thought of a player arriving late into the opposition penalty area takes the breath away given the barren nature of the current attack.

We will also get to find out whether Matias Laba can play the lone defensive midfield role. I have my doubts given his tendency to hunt the ball, but if he can form an effective partnership with Tchani then it changes the whole dynamic of the Whitecaps midfield.

Maybe Robinson will even consider playing 4-3-3 in some games to give himself the insurance of a more static presence in front of the defence in the shape of Teibert or Jacobson while still allowing the possibility of the quick break from the three forward men?

That’s a stretch but at least now the options are more realistic than the previous “Maybe Bolaños can play there?” scenarios.

But what are Columbus getting for their imaginary money?

There’s no doubt that Manneh has plateaued of late in Vancouver and whether that’s down to injury, disillusion or coaching is up for debate but it will be genuinely interesting to see how he fares elsewhere.

The Crew have certainly taken a chance on a player who hasn’t been in good form for a season and change but the potential is still there even though the window for that potential is getting narrower by the week.

If their gamble pays off and they can somehow rediscover the best of Manneh then they will have a player who can change a game in the blink of an eye and a US international that they can build a system and a marketing campaign around.

That’s a long shot but I think most coaches would want the chance to prove they could make that gamble pay.

For now though this looks like a very good move by a Whitecaps team that has needed something good to happen since at least the start of the season.

Next stop the World Cup!

Whitecaps still have no particular place to go

The first priority of a football coach is to win games. The second priority is to entertain the home fans.

Take care of both and you’re a god. Take care of the first and nothing else matters. Take care of the second and you’ll be given some leeway before the axe finally falls.

Right now Carl Robinson is taking care of neither and for the second consecutive home MLS game the Whitecaps failed to score and failed to even threaten against an Eastern Conference opponent as they went down 2-0 to Toronto FC at BC Place.

The only thing that really worked out for Robinson on the day was the red card to Brek Shea (actually a second yellow for dissent) because that will no doubt move the narrative away from just how poor his team were.

Everybody knows how to play the Whitecaps at BC Place by now; sit back and let them come at you because they never really do come at you anyway.

Never has a team been able to turn an attacking corner into a back pass to their own goalkeeper with the alacrity of the Whitecaps and there can’t be many home teams who are so unwilling to use the home crowd to their advantage.

Quietening the supporters with dull football is a great idea if you’re on the road but not so great when you need those fans to be the twelfth man.

Vancouver did get better in the second half with the introduction of Christian Bolaños and, for a brief fifteen minute spell, it even seemed as though they were intent on scoring a goal.

That all fell apart once Shea got that red however and while we can argue all day about the rights and wrongs of the call it’s tough to criticize a player for doing the exact same thing his coach does for almost the entirety the game.

There was a moment in the first half when Robinson was making an unnecessarily petulant point about where a throw in should be taken and if I’m officiating that game I know which team I’m going to be happy to make a big decision against when the time comes.

Even MLS referees are human.

If Robinson spent as much time telling his players where they were going wrong as he does the match officials the results might actually improve.

Hopefully the coming two week break will prompt a little bit of introspection about how the team is being set up because (Soccer Shorts bingo cards at hand!) those two defensive midfielders are killing the team and Fredy Montero looked a figure of despair as he left the field because once again not one chance had been created for him from open play.

That’s partly because almost every other player on the team is being asked to prioritize their defensive duties over any notion of attack and that turned both Shea and Alphonso Davies into meaninglessly insignificant figures going forward.

It’s great that Davies does the defensive duties so well but the kid needs to be allowed to play and to enjoy his football, otherwise he’s going to be transformed from a phenomenon into a journeyman before our very eyes.

On the plus side the weather seems to have got much better!.

Time for Soccer Shorts player ratings!

Richey-6, Williams- 5, Parker-6.5*, Waston-6, Harvey-6, Laba-5.5, Teibert-5, Davies-5, Shea-4.5, Mezquida-5.5, Montero-5.5, Bolaños-6.5

Aim not true enough for the Whitecaps

“If there’s anything that you want

If there’s anything that you need

There’s no need to be evasive

Money talks and it’s persuasive

Possession”

Elvis Costello is right of course.

If you do want good possession stats in soccer then money really is a persuasive talker because good players pass the ball better than bad players and good players command a higher salary than bad players do.

We shouldn’t get over obsessed with possession stats however because although they do tell a story about how a game has played out they don’t always tell the true back story.

Some teams (Whitecaps included) are happy to concede control of the ball knowing full well that the opposition is often at its most vulnerable while in an attacking formation and a swift and sudden breakaway can be their undoing.

The problem for the Whitecaps is that their possession stats in the last two games have been so bad they restore the intuition to any counter intuitive arguments to be made about counter attacks.

Against both San Jose and Tigres the Whitecaps were south of thirty percent when it came to being in control of the ball and even the provisos of being a man and a level of class down can’t hide the fact that those numbers can be brutally damaging to a team.

So what’s the cause?

Function mostly follows formation in this case because the two deep-lying midfielders offer little in terms of receiving the ball from the back four and even when they do they offer equally little in terms of distribution.

None of Laba, Jacobson or Teibert are consistently capable of quality passes and the result is that either one of those three or one of the back four hits a hopeful long ball to the designated lone striker of the day.

In a perfect world said striker would either hold up the ball or flick it on to a marauding team mate but now that opponents have figured out that particular plan any such play is almost always shut down at birth.

That leaves Erik Hurtado charging valiantly across the forward line, Brek Shea wondering why yet another coach isn’t playing him in his best position or Fredy Montero perplexed at the prospect of constantly craning his neck upwards in an attempt to find the ball.

But it doesn’t have to be this way and there is at least hope that the style of play will become easier on the eye as the season develops.

Getting Christian Bolaños back into the first eleven is crucial because even in his brief cameo in Mexico he demonstrated the ability to actually stop and think about what he wanted to do with the ball while it was at his feet.

Combine that with the quality of Alphonso Davies and some combination of Brek Shea, Nicolas Mezquida and (when fit) Jordy Reyna and it’s not inconceivable that Montero may one day get the kind of service he wants.

That’s dependant on Carl Robinson showing a degree of tactical flexibility so let’s not get too over excited but, for home games at least, the team is crying out to be released from the shackles of those two defensive midfielders (And then maybe I can write something about the Whitecaps without having to use the dreaded “two defensive midfielders” phrase?).

This coming Saturday the Whitecaps face a Giovincoless Toronto and while Robinson is never afraid to give his players an excuse for underperforming both he and they need to put thoughts of physical and mental weariness out of their minds.

Firstly, it’s only the sixth game of the season and secondly there’s a two-week break to come following this game, giving everybody a chance to fully recover.

People mostly felt good about the team after the defeat to Tigres but much of that good will was due to tempered expectations and another uninspiring performance at BC Place would undo much of the good work from Tuesday evening.

Has Robinson got the will to unleash his team at least a little bit?

Let’s hope so.

Tigres v Whitecaps: What did we learn?

Well, apart from the obvious fact that a team with higher paid and better quality players will always outplay a team with lower paid and lesser quality players that is.

Fredy Montero won’t create chances on his own- Let’s not say that Carl Robinson didn’t want to sign Montero but let’s at least accept that the striker sort of turned up on his doorstep after being dropped there by Mauro Rosales.

The Whitecaps weren’t in a position to turn down a proven MLS goal scorer but it will be interesting to see how Montero fits into Robinson’s view of how a striker should be utilized.

In that world the forward tends to be a combination of a man isolated on an island away from the rest of the team while simultaneously being set up to comically fail due to no fault of his own.

A kind of Robinson Clouseau.

Erik Hurtado makes the most of the role because he runs around a lot and Nicolas Mezquida showed against Tigres that he can carve out a chance through his harrying of defenders but Montero already looks like the kind of striker who feeds on other people’s scraps.

Being paired with Mezquida up front feels like it would be the right move but Robinson’s aversion to the Uruguayan probably means we’ll see a platoon of Brek Shea as the target man he isn’t and Hurtado as the hard worker with limitations he is before we see that.

Kekuta Manneh drops down the depth chart- There was a time when the last thirty minutes of the Tigres game would have seen the automatic introduction of Manneh.

Unleashing his speed against a team that were pressing for a goal was virtually Robinson’s “go to” move when it came to substitutions.

But a mixture of indifferent form and unwillingness to put in a defensive effort meant the coach couldn’t trust the former rising star in such an important game.

It’s ironic that the man he did trust, Cristian Techera, also failed to track back for the crucial second goal but either Manneh treats his lack of deployment as a wake up call for the season or he should be used as trade bait before his stock falls any further.

Parker ahead of Waston in the defending stakes- Nobody should underestimate just how difficult it was for the Whitecaps defence on Tuesday evening.

A team that is used to facing one or two dangerous players was suddenly facing a plethora and while Ousted was excellent and Harvey admirably steady it was Tim Parker who stood out for his ability to only go to ground when absolutely necessary.

The modern defender needs to be as much a shepherd as he is an enforcer and Parker demonstrated the necessary patience for such a role.

Kendall Waston was mostly excellent too but he’s developing an unnerving ability to throw in at least one disastrous mistake per game.

That probably comes from a desire to be a “leader” on the field but more often than not the end result is that he tries too hard to intercede in situations where intercession is best left to somebody else and that tends to leave a gaps where no gap should be.

Isolated incidents to be sure but ones that add up to a less than stellar body of work.

He can’t be blamed for deflecting the ball into his own net against Tigres but he can be blamed for what went before and what went before was two failed attempts at a hasty clearance.

Suddenly he’s rushing back to make amends and the rest is history.

All in all though the game offered more positives than negatives for Vancouver and the trick for Carl Robinson now will be to somehow configure his team so that it can regularly threaten the opposition goal.

That would be nice.

Tigres burn a little too bright for the Whitecaps

In the general scheme of things a 2-0 defeat on the road to Tigres isn’t that bad of a result for the Vancouver Whitecaps in the first leg of the CONCACAF Champion’s League semi-final.

The problem is that we don’t live in the general scheme of things (Actually, strike that. We very much live in the general scheme of things). I guess the point I’m trying to make is that 2-0 is both a good result and a frustratingly annoying one given the tenor of the game.

Tigres were clearly the better team for the full ninety minutes but the Whitecaps were able to scrape out two of the kind of chances that Carl Robinson must have been dreaming about if he ever managed to get any sleep last night.

On the first chance Brek Shea miscontrolled the ball, then half fell over and then fully dived to earn himself a yellow card for simulation (If you’re going to dive then dive properly!) and on the second Nicolas Mezquida shanked the ball wide when more composure could well have found the net.

The other disappointing element of the night for Vancouver was the quality of the set-pieces as they constantly failed to clear the first defender and, in a game where possession is as rare as a Donald Trump supporter in Mexico, those kind of chances cannot be squandered.

But for all those flaws the Whitecaps were mostly very good indeed.

And for once Robinson’s defensive mindset was both fully justified and well executed with Laba and Jacobson closing down space in the middle and Tim Parker looking every inch the future international he surely is.

Perhaps Sheanon Williams struggled to find his feet (Both literally and metaphorically) and Kendall Waston would love to have the few seconds that led up to his own goal back again.

But sometimes you just have to acknowledge that the opposition were the superior team and that both tired minds and tired bodies are unbeatable enemies in the end.

It seems unlikely that Vancouver can prevent Tigres from scoring at BC Place but at least the tie isn’t dead and buried.

And, perhaps for the first time this season, there is at least a sense of the team finding some kind of structure to build on.

Strange how uplifting some 2-0 defeats can be.

Time for the Soccer Shorts player ratings.

Ousted- 7, Williams-6, Parker-7.5*, Waston-6.5, Harvey-7, Laba-7, Jacobson-7, de Jong-6, Shea-6.6, Montero-5.5, Davies-7 (Bolaños-6.5, Mezquida-6.5,)

Whitecaps soar before falling in San Jose

Ken Loach isn’t a great movie director but he has directed some great movies.

True, there’s a certain Cinéma vérité about his style but, primarily, he’s concerned with substance over style and that substance is mostly about the heartbreaking futility of working class people trying to negotiate a system that is explicitly set up to thwart their dreams.

A generation of British schoolchildren grew up watching Loach’s film “Kes” in which a boy escapes the trials of his mining village upbringing by finding, nurturing and training a young kestrel.

In those moments in which he watches the bird soar he glimpses a kind of redemption for himself; the possibility that a frail and injured thing can somehow live magnificently in the world.

Then one day he comes home and finds that his elder brother has snapped the kestrel’s neck and left it dead in a trash can.

Cheers Ken! Life lesson learned!

Anybody who has seen the new “Rise Up Rain City” segment that’s played on the big screen before the Whitecaps home games this season will have noticed the Loachian influence.

The dreariness of the city, the players miserable and clearly pining for warmer climes they will never attain and a bedraggled pigeon standing sadly in a dirty puddle.

It doesn’t quite end with Alphonso Davies finding the pigeon in a trash can with a snapped neck but that’s the general tenure.

The system, it seems to say, will always thwart your dreams.

And that feels apt for the team this season because they are still battling to find a way to get the best out of themselves.

In San Jose on Saturday evening they raced into a two goal lead over the Earthquakes before a defensive mix up between Kendall Waston and Christian Dean enticed David Ousted to rush out of his penalty area and leave a trailing leg to bring down Chris Wondolowski and earn a red card.

At that time nobody thought that the player to bring off was Nicolas Mezquida. After all the Uruguayan is one of the hardest working players in the team and often proves to be a very effective first line of defence.

Much better to remove one of the more defensively limited forwards such as Techera or Manneh.

I say “nobody” thought that but it’s actually not true because one person did think exactly that and, unfortunately for the Whitecaps, that person happened to be Carl Robinson and his reputaion for not being able to make effective in game decisions took yet another hit.

There was a sense of inevitability about the subsequent three goals with Manneh failing to track back for the second and Russell Teibert failing to close down for the third and a bright start was left amounting to nothing.

Robinson does get some credit for fielding a weakened starting eleven that was able to make such an impressive start but he was as complicit in undoing that good start just as much as his players were.

And right now it feels as though he’s forcing those players into a system that seems explicitly designed to thwart their strengths.

In the post game interview Robinson went on at some length about how important it was for the officials to make the correct call on the big decisions.

Right back at you Carl.

Time for the Soccer Shorts player ratings!

Ousted-4, Nerwinski-5.5, Waston-5, Dean-5, Harvey-5.5- Teibert-5, McKendry-5.5, Manneh-4, Techera-4.5, Mezquida-6, Hurtado-6* (Tornaghi-5)

The Random Analogue Soccer Hydrocollider

Time to throw some ideas into The Random Analogue Soccer Hydrocollider to see which ideas it throws out of the state of the art quantum interface with regard to the Whitecaps.

And here they are (that was quick)!

New contract for Nicolas Mezquida- “Hooray!” say most of the fans while simultaneously suspecting that he still won’t get as many minutes as he should.

Mezquida has never been a firm favourite of Carl Robinson and the arrival of Fredy Montero and Brek Shea only add to the logjam of people ahead of him in the pecking order.

It’s conceivable that Mezquida could be the ideal foil for Montero given that both can play as either a number ten or a little further forward, but that would require a change in the way the Whitecaps play.

That’s a long shot but just about possible given….

The return of Christian Bolaños- Bolaños has been training this week and should get at least some minutes in either San Jose or Mexico.

That’s good news for the Whitecaps because if they needed anything at all in the last couple of games it was a player who could put his foot on the ball and slow the game down.

Bolaños is the best hope of preventing the team from becoming a track meet with a ball thrown in.

Which leads us to……

There’s playing young players and there’s playing young players- Carl Robinson rightly gets kudos for his willingness to give young players a chance in the first team (although there may be one or two in the squad who don’t agree with that assessment).

The concern though is that with the Whitecaps current playing style these youngsters are rapidly learning the value of being rapid while not really getting up to speed on the value of slowing down.

As mentioned, the return of Bolaños should help that and Montero certainly wants a different kind of service than the likes of Hurtado and Rivero so hopefully needs must will be the driving force in enabling the young contingent to add another dimension to their game.

And speaking of adding another dimension….

A good week for MLS referees- That may be a sentence seldom seen but credit where it’s due. The officials were much less PRO-active (See what I did there?) in the opening round of games and that was all to the good.

Sure there were mistakes but at least they didn’t appear to be consciously looking to make them as was the case so often last season.

Maybe they’ve finally realized that when it comes to officiating then less is more?

Speaking of which, there is no more…..