Whitecaps gear up for ‘kill or be killed’ contest
It was a pretty stark message from Vancouver Whitecaps’ striker Fredy Montero on Monday, the day after his MLS team lost in Portland to the rival Timbers: Wednesday night’s playoff home game against the San Jose Earthquakes is “kill or be killed.”
Dramatic, yes, but that’s what it is.
For three weeks the Caps were in a position to lock up first place in the MLS’s Western Conference. All they needed was a win in their final three games. Instead they sandwiched a pair of losses, in New York to the Red Bulls and in Portland on Sunday, around a 1-1 draw with San Jose at B.C. Place Stadium.
Instead of a first-round bye, they head into the one-game playoff elimination at B.C. Place looking down the barrel of sudden death.
Montero, the team’s leading scorer who is nursing a calf injury that limited him to just over a halfhour of playing time in Portland but is expected to be good to go Wednesday, wasn’t alone in sensing the urgency of the situation.
“It’s do or die,” defender Tim Parker told reporters Monday. “Maybe we haven’t been doing our job as of late, but right now it’s put up or shut up really. For us we either have to really show up on Wednesday and show what we’re about, or we go home.”
The disappointment of the draw with San Jose on Oct. 15 is still fresh for the Caps. The elation of Yordy Reyna’s calm completion of a beautiful tick-tack-toe off perfect passes from Cristian Techera and Jake Nerwinski 29 minutes into the game held until Chris Wondlowski back-heeled the ball into the Caps’ box and Valeri Qazaishvili split the defence of Kendall Waston and Marcel de Jong to slip the equalizer past goalie Stefan Marinovic 77 minutes in.
The game plan against San Jose is a simple one: play better defence, especially against those two, and finish more scoring chances.
“We have something to prove against San Jose,” Marinovic said Monday. “We dropped the ball a little bit last week and we definitely want to make up for that.”
Head coach Carl Robinson wouldn’t tip his hand over who will play goal Wednesday — Marinovic, who has started five games this season including the past two, or veteran David Ousted — but was all smiles Monday, confident his players would enjoy the spotlight that’s about to shine on them.
“We’ve come so far, so now the fun begins,” he said. “You can’t be afraid of it, you’ve got to embrace it. You’ve got to enjoy it and it brings out the good players.”