Whitecaps earn draw in home opener
VANCOUVER 1 CHARLOTTE 1
VANCOUVER — Ryan Raposo admits he would have been emotionally lost a few years ago if he made the same mistake that led to the first Charlotte goal of Saturday’s home opener for the Vancouver Whitecaps.
But now, the defender channelled that frustration into more productive methods: mainly by scoring the tying goal for the Whitecaps in their 1-1 Major League Soccer draw with Charlotte FC at B.C. Place.
“I think the elephant in the room, maybe people don’t want to ask me about, is their first goal and obviously me giving away the ball,” Raposo said after the match.
“I mean, I’m seeing it all over Twitter. Everyone’s tweeting at me. It’s football, people make mistakes. But yeah, it’s something that we’ve trained 1,000 times over and as soon as the ball went in the first thought was ‘I’m gonna see this tomorrow morning on the film or two days on the film.’ ”
Raposo went to backheel the ball away, only for Brecht Dejaegere to seize the ball and fire in a cross, with Enzo Copetti dummying the pass to allow Iuri Tavares to score the opener in the 31st minute for Charlotte.
“I think maybe a couple of years ago, I think I would have lost my head after that. Like put my head down and … maybe had a rough rest of the game,” Raposo said.
“But honestly the ball went in and my mindset was like ‘It happens. I’m going to continue to dribble at guys, I’m gonna continue to be active in the final third I’m gonna continue to play my game’ and yeah, I’m happy. I’m happy with my performance because I did exactly that.”
The Whitecaps equalized five minutes into first-half stoppage time after a deep cross from Pedro Vite found a wide open Raposo who calmly tucked the ball past a sprawling Kristijan Kahlina.
“I mean, I think a goal’s a goal,” Raposo said when asked about the goal and how it was bundled into the back of the net after Kahlina appeared to over dive on the attempted save.
“It doesn’t matter how it goes in, it matters that it does go in. I clearly meant to put it back across the goal and it trickled in.
Vancouver’s best chances of the second half came within minutes of each other, with Kahlina denying Javain Brown along the line before following it up with a save against substitute attacker Fafa Picault.
Picault’s chance came after Charlotte’s Nathan Byrne attempted to clear the ball, only to hit it straight at the U.S. winger allowing him a one-onone chance that Kahlina pushed away.
Vancouver’s in-game management was handled by assistant coach Michael D’Agostino, who was serving as the team’s head coach in the absence of Vanni Sartini who started the first of his six-game match suspension.
“Overall we did start a little bit sleepy. A lot of the things that we did plan on doing, we just didn’t execute. Whether it was for a lack of understanding, I’m not sure,” said D’Agostino after the match.