Feeling the heat
Injury list already long and team may lose more players to Gold Cup
Injury-depleted Whitecaps could lose Alphonso Davies and others to Canada’s Gold Cup team as they prepare to face the Chicago Fire
The Whitecaps’s depth could be a blazing disaster just at the worst time possible. They’re playing the white hot Chicago Fire next Saturday and they’re set to lose a couple more players from their already depleted squad.
Just look at the injury list: Brett Levis, Yordy Reyna, David Edgar, Christian Dean, Nico Mezquida, Kendall Waston, Christian Bolanos and Erik Hurtado.
Now you can add some looming Gold Cup call-ups: Alphonso Davies, Marcel de Jong and Russell Teibert could all be called by Canada.
Given how the Caps barely survived Saturday’s entertaining-but-nerve-rattling, what next Saturday’s lineup may look like is worrisome. Still, there’s cause for hope. As little ball as the Whitecaps held in Saturday’s 2-2 draw in Minnesota, they still generated 11 shots.
“We’ll gather ourselves, try to get a few more fit able bodies training for next week, and prepare for a difficult match in Chicago,” Whitecaps coach Carl Robinson said after the game.
After the Caps conceded a pair of goals in short order, off some poor defending, Robinson said the team’s response pleased him.
“(Our response) was great. Two individual errors. At this level of football, you can’t make individual errors, and if you make them, you concede goals, it gives the other team momentum, and that’s what happened. But great response. Good character.”
But against Chicago, they won’t be able to afford errors like those. The Fire are second in the MLS Eastern Conference. That’s no mistake either; adding midfielders Dax McCarty and Bastian Schweinsteiger has given Chicago and incredible engine room. After being an allaround mess in 2016, Chicago is now one of the league’s best passing teams.
A small bit of good news for the Caps: the Fire will be without McCarty as he’s been called up to the American squad for the Gold Cup.
Whitecaps keeper and stand-in captain David Ousted called Saturday’s final score “disappointing.”
“We could have definitely got the three points, but a point on the road is worth taking, and we’ll hopefully continue that road form,” he said.
“That road form” had better mean “disruptive.” The Caps have done pretty well this year in sitting back and letting the other team pass the ball around the outside, making their own penalty area something of a fortress. But that’s also mostly been with Waston and the suspended Sheanon Williams in the mix.
Andrew Jacobson and Jake Nerwinski have done well the last two weeks, but they’re still second choice.
Ousted remains defiant. “I believe we have the quality away from home to go and win,” he said.
Robinson hopes to get a couple players back this week but other than possibly Reyna, it’s not clear who that might be. Reyna, the Peruvian playmaker signed in the off-season is nearly recovered from the broken foot he suffered at the end of pre-season and was fully involved in training last week.
The quartet of Bolanos, Mezquida, Dean and Hurtado were all working on the side. Mezquida is likely still a few weeks from returning, while Bolanos is dealing with a shoulder problem suffered in a match for Costa Rica two weeks ago. Were he fit, you assume he’d be playing in the Gold Cup. Christian Dean might be close but still needs to get into full practices. And Hurtado, who’s fallen well down the depth chart since injuring his foot almost two months ago, is still working way back too.
You can see the focus for the week: get healthy, and get ready for a big onslaught.