Caps must buck(s) up to compete
Finding better players? That’s one thing. Paying them to play here is the bigger issue
Here’s the good news: In two of the last three years, Carl Robinson has taken the Vancouver Whitecaps to the second round of the Western Conference playoffs in Major League Soccer.
Here’s the more sobering news: In those four games — two against Portland in 2015 and two against Seattle in 2017 — the Whitecaps failed to score a goal and, against the Sounders, they produced one insignificant shot over the 180-plus minutes of the series.
Following the Whitecaps’ 2-0 loss to the Sounders on Thursday, Robinson was asked about the next step for his club. This year the Whitecaps made strides during the regular season. But based on the evidence of their series with the defending MLS Cup champs from Seattle, there still exists a huge gulf between the Caps and the league’s powers.
“We’ll have to get our thinking caps on and see what we can do,” Robinson said following Thursday’s loss. “We need to come back better next year because that’s the level we want to achieve.”
Which is interesting because, in the next breath, Robinson identified the core issue that confronts his team.
“You have to try to find better players,” the Caps’ head coach said. “I believe we’re in a better place than we were two years ago when we went out to Portland. They went on to win the MLS Cup (in 2015) because they have better players. Better players make you a better team.”
That, at least, is the easy part. The hard part is finding those better players and, more to the point, paying them.
There were a number of factors that contributed to the Whitecaps’ uninspired performance against the Sounders, and principal among them were the health of Yordy Reyna and Cristian Techera. Before the Western Conference semifinal, both players sustained injuries that weren’t serious enough to keep them out of the lineup but did hamper their performance.
At least the Whitecaps better hope that was the case because, against the Sounders, they got next to nothing from their best attackers. Reyna, who helped transform the team when he became a regular in early July, was a non-factor against the Sounders. Techera was the same story.
Now that could be construed as bad luck for the Whitecaps, but the bigger takeaway from this series is another familiar story for the club and its supporters. When the table stakes are highest, their best aren’t good enough — you don’t need quantum physics to analyze this problem.
In terms of payroll, the Sounders sit seventh in MLS with a total compensation of $10.3 million and the Whitecaps are ninth at just over $8 million.
Before you ask, Portland, which knocked the Whitecaps out of top spot in the West with a 2-1 victory in the regular-season finale, is sixth at $10.8 million.
Now a couple of million doesn’t sound like a lot in the landscape of 21st-century sports, but in MLS it’s significant.
It’s the difference between a Clint Dempsey, the American international who scored twice on Thursday and pulls down $3.9 million a year (ninth highest in MLS), and Fredy Montero, the Whitecaps’ highest paid player at $1.8 million (17th highest in the league) who disappeared in this series.
In a league where a million buys you a lot, it’s also the difference between two star-level players. Portland has four of the league’s 50-highest paid players and Seattle has three. The Whitecaps have two: Montero and Matias Laba, who was lost for the season in August with a knee injury.
Since Sept. 27 the Whitecaps also met the Sounders and Timbers four times, twice in the regular season when they were trying to sew up first place and twice in the playoffs. They lost three times, tied once and were outscored 7-1 over those four games.
“We came up a bit short,” said Robinson. “But we’ve fallen short again this year. We know where we are. I won’t fault the players in there. Sometimes you have to accept where you are in football and we know where we are as a club, which is fine. “
So where, exactly, is that? It doesn’t appear the Whitecaps will free up the capital to sign their own star or stars. At least they haven’t in the past. The team is losing money. Last week Jeff Mallett, part of the Whitecaps’ ownership group, appeared on Sportsnet 650 and said the Caps aren’t for sale.
“There’s absolutely zero interest,” Mallett said, before adding. “We’re early days and there’s lots of upside. The short answer is we’re having way too much fun. We love it. We absolutely love it. We want to continue to bring a winning football club to B.C., and also to Canada.”
Funny, I don’t think Toronto is worried about a winning side.
With a limit on resources, it’s fallen to Robinson and his staff to scour the soccer world for bargains, a player who has flown under the radar here, a player stuck in a bad situation there. The Whitecaps have done some good work in these areas, bringing in players like Reyna, Aly Ghazal and Nosa Igiebor this year.
The resulting lineup was the deepest in club history and that became the biggest part of the Caps’ identity. But, again, it wasn’t enough to get them over the hump against an elite team when it mattered.
“People (ask) who’s your best player all the time,” Robinson said before Game 2. “There’s this young Peruvian (Reyna) who’s your best player. He’s not (a regular) on the Peruvian (national team). They’ve got a Uruguayan international (Nicolas Lodeiro) and best American centre forward (Dempsey). We know our backs are against the wall.”
Robinson, in fact, did his damnedest to rally his troops against their superior foe. In the run-up to Thursday’s match, he played the underdog, no-one-is-giving-us-a-chance card at every opportunity. He boldly predicted a Whitecaps’ win in Game 2. He kept the status of Reyna and Techera a mystery.
All that made for an interesting distraction. Better players would have helped him more.
“I put as many attacking players out there as I could and we still couldn’t muster two or three decent chances,” Robinson said Thursday. “Sometime it’s not about personnel but it’s about lack of quality. Over the two legs we didn’t have enough quality to get through.”
But will they ever? That’s the one question the Whitecaps have yet to answer.