Playoff chances all but extinguished
Real Salt Lake win means Whitecaps’ final two dates are just potential moral victories — at best
The Vancouver Whitecaps season is over — and it hasn’t even finished.
The Major League Soccer team’s post-season hopes were all but extinguished Thursday night when Real Salt Lake crushed the New England Revolution 4-1 in Sandy, Utah.
While the Caps needed to win both of their remaining games to make the playoffs, their qualifying was also contingent on RSL dropping points in their final two matches. They can still tie on points, but the tiebreaker — goal differential — remains an unrealistic hurdle, with the Caps sitting on -14 and Real (14-12-7, 49 points) at even.
With Vancouver having to win its two remaining games — Sunday afternoon at LAFC and Oct. 28 at home to Portland — by a combined 15-0, in a season where they have an MLS-low two shutouts, it realistically means those final two dates are just potential moral victories, at best.
And the Whitecaps (12-13-7, 43 points), losers of four of five, could use some positive vibes, especially after the Chernobyl-istic end to Wednesday’s home game against Sporting Kansas City. The 4-1 loss was painful enough, but the way the Caps showed their belly in the final 15 minutes was so discomfiting that midfielder Russell Teibert felt compelled to make a forceful and public apology to fans after the game.
At training on Thursday, he still had no answer for the way the team responded after giving up the eventual winning goal to Daniel Salloi in the 82nd minute, as they gave up two embarrassingly easy tapins in injury time.
“I did have a night to sleep on it, but really I don’t (have an answer), because that’s never been the makeup of this club, to crumble like that. I made that promise, and I’ll stick to it, and that will never happen again,” said Teibert, who completed 12 of 13 passes in a surprise substitute appearance, given he’d played 90 minutes for Canada in the 5-0 win over Dominica the night before.
“We had a night to sleep on it, and now it’s back to work. For us, it’s just about the next game, the next play, just getting back on the field and not dwelling too much on what happened at home.”
Whitecaps interim head coach Craig Dalrymple was up into the wee hours of the morning watching Wednesday’s game on replay, and he was glued to the TV again Thursday watching a Real team snap its four-game winless skid with a victory over the already-eliminated Revs.
“I didn’t sleep too much (on Wednesday),” he said. “I watched it back again; my wife wasn’t happy the TV was on at one in the morning.”
With the team off Friday, and its fate decided, he probably found sleep a little easier to come by Thursday night.
The Caps played Wednesday without five of their regular starters — Alphonso Davies, Doneil Henry, Yordy Reyna, Aly Ghazal and Kendall Waston were all ruled out because of their international duties. Teibert would have been held out as well, but an injury to Efrain Juarez meant he made the game-day roster, and Dalrymple subbed him on in the 69th minute.
All of the players who missed the game should be available for Sunday’s match, but heavy rotation should be expected so the depth players get some game action to assess their value for next year.
Striker Anthony Blondell would be among those, though the powerful Venezuelan forward would have likely started anyway, with Kei Kamara suspended for the contest.
The Caps’ leading goalscorer was shown a red card after the game for putting his hands around the neck of the MLS version of Boston Bruins pest Brad Marchand — SKC’s Johnny Russell.
The mouthy Scotsman was at the centre of the melee in the April meeting that saw Reyna and Juarez ejected from the game, leaving the Caps short-handed in what would be the team’s worst loss in MLS play: a 6-0 defeat.
Dalrymple was tight-lipped about Russell’s antics, which have now resulted in red cards to three Vancouver players.
“Johnny does what Johnny does,” he said.
“He come on and lit a fire under them … and he gets under people’s skin. That’s why the coach loves him.”
It hasn’t been determined if Kamara will face additional discipline, but Vancouver now has an MLS-high eight red cards, with Reyna and Juarez accounting for two each.
Now the problem is going to be finding motivation beyond a job audition.
Teibert showed fight right to the end Wednesday, sprinting back from his attacking midfield position past several sedentary teammates to try to stop a 97th minute goal, and now it’s up to his teammates to show the same fight they say they still have.
“It’s about righting our wrongs,” said Teibert.
“We can’t play (Sunday) like we finished our game yesterday.”
Added Dalrymple: “We still have fight in us. That’s not driven by me, that’s them saying that.”