Caps need a sprinkling of New York star power to snap out of funk
Robinson’s side should be fired up for tonight
The distractions are over and the Vancouver Whitecaps now face a five-game stretch to determine the shape and structure of their Major League Soccer playoff schedule.
It’s still just possible that they won’t qualify for the post-season, but if they don’t it will require a series of results so bizarre that it would almost be worth witnessing for the sheer epoch shaking convergence of the factors required.
Anyway, that kind of sporting death wish aside, the biggest problem facing coach Carl Robinson right now is the state of his squad. He said after the 3-0 defeat to Seattle (the latest one, not the one just before that) that his team was “a little bit banged up” and “down to the bare bones.”
That may have been manager speak for “we didn’t play very well at all but I don’t want to say that,” but there’s certainly the sense that a few key players for the Whitecaps have dropped down a notch or two in recent weeks.
Pedro Morales is struggling with injury, Kekuta Manneh has lost that undefinable zip that makes him almost unplayable and Octavio Rivero looks like a man who has hauled a week’s worth of shopping back home only to be told that he bought the wrong soap powder and that he needed to go back for the right one (though, to be fair, Rivero always seems to look like that so that might not be quite so relevant).
This time last year the Whitecaps went into the final five games knowing they had to get something in each one to sneak into the final playoff spot, but this year the importance of each game can be recalibrated on a match day by match day basis.
And that begins with New York City FC today.
On paper the visitors are the ideal opponent for Vancouver; an attacking team that really doesn’t know how to defend at all and, three or four weeks ago, this would have been about as close to a home banker as you could imagine.
Maybe it still is, but New York has won its last two games, desperately needs three points to maintain their slim hopes of a playoff spot and, in Jason Kreis, they have a coach who is struggling to come to terms with the weird mix of players on his side but does at least know the Whitecaps well.
Maybe the biggest advantage for the Whitecaps might turn out to be that all three of the NYCFC “stars” have made the journey west and though their presence helps emphasize the imbalance inherent in a so-called parity league (and the imbalance inherent in the team they represent) playing against a couple of World Cup winners might well be the impetus to shake that slightly jaded feel that has hung over a few of the hometown heroes in their recent home starts.
Robinson will no doubt claim that his players need no more encouragement than the possibility of gaining a vital three points but they are only human (even if we forget that ourselves sometimes) and it could be that a sprinkling of star power will help focus a few minds and steer a few players back on track.
Let’s hope New York City provides the gasoline to reignite a team that is starting to look as though it is running on fumes.