Rookie getting offensive since moving into starting role
Right back Nerwinski ‘finds a way to make an impact’ in Whitecaps games Patrick Johnston
To understand how well Jake Nerwinski’s rookie season is going, just look to the pass he made to Cristian Techera on Saturday to set up the game’s opening goal.
Like he has so many times this season, Nerwinski raced like a bullet up the right side of the pitch, timing his overlapping run perfectly for Bernie Ibini to lay the ball off for him.
Where the ball was going next was never in doubt. The Whitecaps have been working crosses to the front of the net all year. That’s where the best scoring chances come from.
The ball landed on Techera’s foot and the Bug guided it home.
The rookie has come a long way from the beginning of the year, when he admitted the pace of the game had been a big, big adjustment for him coming out of college.
Whitecaps coach Carl Robinson was straight up about the 22-yearold right back’s performance on Saturday. “I thought it was his best game.” Nerwinski’s growing offensive influence is clear.
He and fellow right back Sheanon Williams may line up in the same spot and have some similar passing numbers, but there are clear differences. Passing data shows that Nerwinski has made his touches much further up the field than Williams.
That’s played out in how they distribute the ball, with Williams having put in many more long balls than Nerwinski, and also a couple more passes per game.
Nerwinski, who his coach said keeps pretty quiet, pointed to his teammates for why the team has been so successful, especially of late.
“We’re starting to click,” he said. “Even with all the rotation we’re starting to understand each other.”
Credit the Whitecaps’ straightforward system, it would seem.
“We don’t ask too much of him or to do anything special, but he finds a way to make an impact” said Tim Parker. “He’s gelled very well.”
Nerwinski was also involved in the build up to Yordy Reyna’s diving header, which stood up as the winner. He fed Ibini, who curled a cross across the face of the goal, finding Reyna.
Nerwinski was also the guy who delivered the long cross from the right corner that landed on Reyna’s forehead for the Peruvian’s similarly spectacular game winner against NYCFC way back in July.
At the start of the year, he looked set for a summer as Williams’ understudy. Williams, a veteran of seven MLS seasons, was brought in to provide the stability Steven Beitashour provided at right back from 2013-15, which was absent from the Whitecaps’s lineup in 2016.
Williams had a strong start to the year, but off-field issues — domestic assault charges were stayed against him in June — saw him away from the team for a time.
Nerwinski, who had started a handful of games to open the season, was forced into the breach and he’s been an almost-constant ever since. Going into Wednesday’s game against Minnesota United (7 p.m., B.C. Place), Williams has started 14 times, but Nerwinski has now started a dozen games.
Ten of those have come in the 13 games since June 17.
“He got his chance,” Robinson said Tuesday. “He’s grabbed it with both hands. “He has to keep pushing.” Nerwinski, who the Caps added in first round of the 2017 MLS Super Draft from the University of Connecticut, said that going into his final year of NCAA soccer, “I knew I had a chance to make it to this level.”
“But honestly, I thought it might be a long shot.”
Free kicks
Robinson said newly signed midfielder Nosa Igiebor would arrive on Thursday or Friday. “Strength, power, experience” was how he summed up the Nigerian’s attributes. “Scores spectacular goals,” he added. “It was a no-brainer deal for us.” Igiebor, 26, was a free agent after he finished the 2016-17 season with Rizespor in Turkey; he’d made a mid-season transfer from Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv. A classic box-to-box midfielder, he’s also played for Real Betis in Spain, Hapoel Tel Aviv in Israel and Lillestrom in Norway.