Players recharged and ready to go following marathon August
Tim Parker picked his NFL fantasy football team. Jordan Harvey worked on a baby nursery.
After a jam-packed August that included eight games in 29 days, the Vancouver Whitecaps were in the unfamiliar position of having some down time this week. No one was complaining. “We didn’t know what to do with ourselves,” said rookie defender Parker, 22.
“We did a fantasy football draft ... I’m planning on winning that league.”
It’s been a strong spring and summer in Major League Soccer for the Whitecaps, who sit second in the overall standings behind the Los Angeles Galaxy.
Vancouver finished last month 4-2-2 in all competitions, including a victory over the Montreal Impact for its first Amway Canadian Championship.
September will see the Whitecaps play just five times, beginning with a home game Wednesday with the Colorado Rapids.
“It’s nice to get these opportunities throughout a season. You come back in, everybody’s energized, really ready to get back at it,” said Harvey, a 31-year-old defender who built the nursery with his first child on the way. “(The team is) just focusing on the good performances ... we need to fine-tune a few things, but once we’ve done that I think we’ll be up and running again.”
Veteran midfielder Mauro Rosales said the break came at the perfect time.
“We recharged,” said the 34- year- old. “We are really pleased about what happened in the last month. Now we have to move forward and keep our heads up and just move with the same mentality.”
After rotating players in and out of the lineup during that eight-game marathon, Whitecaps head coach Carl Robinson said he hopes to settle into a relatively consistent starting 11 with seven league matches remaining. He will be forced to make at least two changes next week after defender Kendall Waston and midfielder Matias Laba were both sent off in Houston.
The Whitecaps play all three of their league matches this month at home, where they are 7-4-1.
“We always believe in what we have,” said Rosales. “We always have faith in what we can do. We believe in our players and that we can face anybody.”
The Whitecaps aren’t getting ahead of themselves with the franchise’s first post-season home game looking more likely.
“For us, it’s just not getting content,” said Parker.
“We want to keep pushing and we want to win more. I think that there’s a lot of hunger in this team and we know we’re capable of winning.”