Caps are stuck in a slump, but Jacobson sees wins ahead
Andrew Jacobson has seen this movie before.
Spend a bit of time in Major League Soccer and you’ll go through a slump. It’s a league of slumps and streaks, where winning as many games as you lose is often enough to make the playoffs.
And Jacobson, a 30-year-old Whitecaps midfielder, has spent more than a bit of time in MLS.
He started with D.C. United in 2009. He played for expansion Philadelphia in 2010, spent four seasons with FC Dallas and then joined expansion New York City in 2015.
So, yeah, he knows about slumps. Philly started their inaugural season 2-7-1. With Dallas, Jacobson endured runs of 1-6-1 in 2011, 0-76 in 2012, 0-5-6 in 2013 and 0-6-2 in 2014. Dallas made the playoffs in three of those four seasons.
New York City started off 1-7-5 before winning four of their next five games last season. And here’s the thing that gives Jacobson hope and confidence with nine games left in the Caps’ regular season: He’d take this team over those ones any day — on paper, at least.
“I’ve been on some swings before and this team is far better than the teams I’ve pulled out of slumps on,” he said ahead of Saturday’s road contest against Sporting Kansas City. “We have the players not just to get out of a bad stretch of results, but to actually go on and do something this year.”
That will require some kind of turnaround.
On the surface, the Caps (8-11-6) are in the thick of a tight race for one of the final playoff spots in the Western Conference.
Kansas City (35 points) is fifth, followed by Portland (32), San Jose (31), Vancouver (30) and Seattle (27). The top six make it.
San Jose and Seattle have two games in hand on the Caps. Vancouver also has the worst goal differential in the west (minus-7) and that’s the second tiebreaker after wins.
Portland, Vancouver and Seattle have eight wins. San Jose has seven. Kansas City has 10.
In other words, while these five teams remain tightly packed on points, the math is not in the Caps’ favour.
Vancouver also has four of its next five games on the road, and they’ve never won in K.C. (0-3-1), and they’re 1-7-0 in Los Angeles, where they head next weekend.
But the most worrying part is simply the Caps’ current form. They are winless in five (0-3-2), have one win in eight (1-4-3) and two wins in 12 (2-6-4).
“Just keep pushing on,” Jacobson said when asked how they get out of this pit.
“We focus on being very aggressive, moving forward and taking it one game at a time. That’s all we can do. We didn’t get a lot of bounces our way (in last weekend’s 2-1 loss to San Jose), but we do have a lot to build off of.”
Jacobson, a native of Palo Alto, Calif., acquired in a pre-season deal with NYCFC, has been one of the Caps’ best performers this season.
Head coach Carl Robinson left him out of the starting lineup last weekend in favour of Matias Laba in defensive midfield, with Pedro Morales alongside Laba as a deeplying playmaker.
But given Robinson’s post-game comments about starting the players who deserved to play, you have to think Jacobson will be on the field at Children’s Mercy Park.
“It’ll allow us to figure out, character-wise, where we are, where a lot of guys are,” Jacobson said about the tough upcoming road stretch. “You don’t have a ton to lose in those situations, so we can come out and really go to win games, not just try to get a point here and there.
“What we need to do is collectively press well, play better and be aggressive in the attacking third.”