Caps aim to leapfrog over Sounders
A win over streaking Pacific rivals vaults Vancouver into final West playoff spot
“We don’t like Canadians,” cracked Seattle Sounders coach Brian Schmetzer.
“No, wait, that’s our president.”
It’s true the ongoing NAFTA negotiations between Canada and the United States are contentious — well, as contentious as things can get between a bunch of suits around a table — but the bigger cross-battle border is the one brewing this weekend.
Sounders versus Whitecaps. Seattle versus Vancouver. USA versus Canada. Cascadia Cup glory.
Both teams are hell-bent on qualifying for the Major League Soccer playoffs, and both teams are close to the cutoff line — the Sounders (12-9-5) sitting in sixth place on 41 points, the Caps (11-97) in seventh with 40 points, just outside of the final post-season berth.
Adding to the stakes is the chance for the Sounders to raise the Cascadia Cup — the prized supporters’ trophy that goes to the winner of a long-standing three-way competition between the Pacific Northwest clubs — with either a win or a draw.
“The added bonus, the flavour, the little bit of sparkle to the match, is the Cascadia Cup. I know we can go up there and get a result, and (the Cup) will come back to us,” said Schmetzer.
“It’s the biggest game of the year. It’s a rivalry game, it’s Seattle. What more can you ask for?,” said Caps midfielder Russell Teibert. “This is a championship game for us. We want three points. We know we need them. Especially at home. Especially against Seattle.
“We know what’s at stake going into this game.”
The Whitecaps are on a sixgame unbeaten streak (4-0-2), having scored 15 goals over that span. It’s the best current streak in MLS. Behind Seattle, that is.
The Sounders have won a league-record eight straight games — starting with a 2-0
win over the Caps at CenturyLink Field on July 21 — and are unbeaten in 11. Despite having snapped Portland’s record 15-game unbeaten run earlier this year, the Caps are framing themselves as the big underdogs for Saturday’s 7 p.m. match.
“You could say it’s that David versus Goliath story right now, because … we know how good of a team they are, and they’re on one of the best runs in MLS history,” said Teibert. “We all know the story of David and Goliath, so hopefully, we can do something special at B.C. Place.”
To hear the narrow-focused questions asked by Seattle media these days, it’s being viewed as more of a ‘Davies’ vs. Goliath matchup down the
I-5, as Alphonso Davies didn’t feature in their first meeting. The Whitecaps winger was held out of that game as his representation hammered out his record-setting transfer to Bayern Munich, where he’ll move at the end of this season.
“He’s a good player. He’s fast, he’s young, he has a lot of skill,” said Sounders’ midfielder Ozzie Alonso. “But we have to keep him in front of us. It’s going to be a battle.”
Davies will be given extra attention with the absence of Yordy Reyna, who misses the game on yellow card accumulation, and will make the daunting task of scoring against Seattle — who have conceded a league-low 27 goals — that much harder. Vancouver hasn’t scored a goal in four straight games against Seattle.
Reyna’s fellow Peruvian, striker Raul Ruidiaz, made his MLS debut as a substitute against the Caps in their July meeting, and has started every game since — all wins. He and Nico Lodeiro have combined for eight goals and five assists over that span.
“The front two are very dangerous, and they have developed a nice little relationship
between the two of them,” said Vancouver coach Carl Robinson. “But they have good players scattered all over — rolled out wide with (Harry) Shipp, Ozzie — good old Ozzie, who’s always there, fighting in midfield — and Gustav (Svensson), and they’re pretty solid at back, and they have fantastic goalkeeping as well.”
Seattle currently has a 90 per cent chance of making the playoffs, mostly due to their remaining eight games all coming against teams with inferior records.
The Caps’ road is much tougher, reflected in their 29.5 per cent odds of earning a post-season berth. With the exception of back-to-back road games against the L.A.
Galaxy and Toronto FC, all are against teams above them in the West standings — though it also means they partly control their own destiny.
But Robinson wasn’t doing any calculations or math.
“There’s no point looking ahead to the L.A. game or the Toronto game, because you lose points prior to that, those games might become irrelevant,” he said.
“We’ve got a seven-game season, and that’s the way we’re breaking it down. It’s one game at a time, and we’ve got to try to finish in the top half of the mini seven-game season to try to get in the playoffs.”