Bid to stop rival reaching playoffs in MLS finale
Already eliminated from the post-season, Vancouver can end Portland’s push, too
Sunday is a gift from the scheduling gods.
This Whitecaps season has felt devoid of meaning for a number of weeks now. But it can still end Sunday at B.C. Place with a small sense of satisfaction: Seeing their most bitter rivals as miserable as them. More miserable, perhaps. The Caps and their fans have known their fate for a while now. It has sunk in. The season ends Sunday, regardless, and there is a busy and crucial off-season ahead.
Portland’s misery Sunday would be sudden: A playoff spot there for the taking, then gone.
“Their motivation is a negative motivation,” Timbers coach Caleb Porter said this week. “Ours is to get into the playoffs.
“They’re fighting to not let us in, we’re fighting to get in, so it’s going to be a spicy game.”
One would hope. It’s the least Caps fans deserve in a season that has seen their flawed and fragile team go 5-5-6 at B.C. Place and 9-15-9 overall, good for ninth in the 10-team Western Conference.
Heading into the final day of the regular season — dubbed MLS Decision Day — Portland (12-13-8, 44 points) is in a four-team scramble for the final three playoff spots in the west.
They trail Kansas City (44 points), Seattle (45) and Salt Lake (46), but Portland will be in with a win because Seattle and Salt Lake face each other. K.C. hosts struggling San Jose and all games kick off at the same time.
It’s a dream scenario for the league, a pressure-packed game for Portland — last year’s MLS Cup champions — and an opportunity for the Caps to play spoiler and at least send fans into the off-season with a smile.
“We need to show the fans that we’re not just here to go down with another loss and especially not with Portland coming in,” said Caps goalkeeper David Ousted, who was voted the most untradeable Whitecap in a Sunday Province poll.
“We’ve got a chance to stop their playoff season and that’s what we want to do.”
It’s also not lost on the Caps that Sunday offers some measure of revenge for last season, when the Timbers beat the Caps 2-0 at B.C. Place in a Western Conference semifinal. It’s not the same, of course. A playoff win last year would have marked a franchise milestone for the Caps. A win Sunday would be more like dragging your annoying neighbour to a funeral.
“That hurt a lot,” Ousted said of last season’s exit.
“Our first home playoff game, against a rival, and they knock us out. It hurt a lot, it hurt me a lot and that’s why I want to go in on Sunday and hopefully pay it back a little bit.”
Said defender Jordan Harvey: “It was a tough loss. One of the toughest of my career. I don’t really forget those things.”
If the Caps can win by three goals — however unlikely that seems — they’ll also reclaim the Cascadia Cup from Seattle. Anything less and the Timbers will win that, too, so Sunday also has the potential to be a very painful conclusion to a plodding season.
In Vancouver’s favour is the fact Portland is without two key players to yellow card accumulation: Diego Chara, the influential defensive midfielder, and starting centre-back Liam Ridgewell.
Star playmaker Diego Valeri is also listed as questionable with a hamstring injury, although you have to think if he’s anywhere close to fit he’ll play.
Portland has been in this kind of situation before. They won their last three games of 2015 to make the playoffs and ended up going all the way. But the road hasn’t been kind to them in 2016. They are 0-10-6 away from Providence Park and will have to change that Sunday.
“The fact we haven’t won on the road, all these storylines, it doesn’t matter,” said Porter, whose team crashed out of the CONCACAF Champions League at home Wednesday to Costa Rican side Saprissa.
“We just need to win this game. That’s it. Doesn’t matter how we do it. Doesn’t matter who’s in the lineup. Doesn’t matter what’s happened in the past.
“We win and we’re in and that should give us a lot of motivation. We could have a really good feeling getting into the playoffs.”
Or they could be heartbroken at the final whistle with the Caps taking pleasure in their pain.