TACKLING THEIR BIGGEST WAVE
CONCACAF semis ‘huge’ for Caps
They were just kids, but Christian Bolanos and Kendall Waston remember. How could they forget?
A decade before they became teammates for the Vancouver Whitecaps, the soccer players competed together for Deportivo Saprissa, famous for winning championships in their native Costa Rica.
In 2005, Bolanos was a 20-year-old winger when he scored at home in Saprissa’s 2-0 victory against Mexican club Pumas in the first leg of the CONCACAF Champions Cup final.
Waston remembers the goal because he was a 17-year-old defender on Saprissa’s reserve team. He remembers the celebrations and the euphoria in the country when Saprissa advanced to the FIFA Club World Cup after it held Pumas to a 2-1 victory in Mexico City in the second leg.
At the world club championship that December in Tokyo, Bolanos dazzled and was awarded the Bronze Ball as the thirdbest player in the tournament of continental champions. Saprissa lost 3-0 in the semifinals to Liverpool, but Bolanos won a tryout with the famous English club.
He didn’t earn a contract from Liverpool but Bolanos considers that 2005 tournament one of the highlights of his career, which is saying something because he went on to star in two World Cups for Costa Rica, for
whom Waston also has become a national-team regular.
“Was my first big tournament,” Bolanos, 32, said before travelling Monday with the Whitecaps to Monterrey, Mexico for tonight’s CONCACAF semifinal against the UNAL Tigres.
“I think I was 20. It was pretty amazing. After that, I was trying to sign with Liverpool. For me, it was a big experience. And now we have a chance to be there again.
“The fans, the crowd, there’s so much difference between MLS and (Latin) America. Everything is different. The passion. We have a lot of young players. They can see in this game how everything is different and what we are talking about.”
The Whitecaps’ Latin-American players have been talking a lot about this game and this opportunity for the seventh-year Major League Soccer franchise.
Vancouver’s Colombian striker, Fredy Montero, and Argentine midfielder Mauro Rosales were teammates with the Seattle Sounders when they made the CONCACAF semifinals in 201213.
“We did play against Monterrey,” Montero said. “Of course, Mexican games are really passionate. Fans are crazy about the local team. MLS, there is a limit to the players you can have. Mexico, there is no salary cap. They can spend as much money as they want. They can have the best players from South America, even players from Europe. They know what football is about. But on the other hand, we are hungry. We are looking to make some history here.”
No MLS team has won the CONCACAF Champions League since the club championship for North and Central America was reformatted in 2008. The Whitecaps and Dallas FC, which plays Mexican club Pachuca on Wednesday, are just the fifth and sixth MLS teams to make the final four.
Mexican teams have won all eight Champions League finals.
If the Whitecaps beat Tigres — the second leg is April 5 in Vancouver — they’ll play the Dallas-Pachuca winner for the right to represent CONCACAF at the FIFA Club World Cup next December in the United Arab Emirates.
“If people don’t understand how big it is, I would ask them to try to understand how big it is,” Whitecaps’ coach Carl Robinson told us. “This is the biggest game in the club’s history. You get an opportunity sometimes once in a lifetime if you’re lucky, and I think this is our opportunity.
“Away to Tigres is a difficult game. They win things regularly. They’ve got eight players who have played over 100 games together. They’ve got a worldclass manager. They’ve got two centre-forwards who make more than my team. You could go on and on. But it’s a game of football.
“For us to be in this position, in the semifinal of the Champions League, is a phenomenal achievement. You’ve got to embrace it, you’ve got to meet the challenge head-on and you’ve got to attack it. And we will. No one will give us a chance, which is great. I like proving people wrong.”
The Whitecaps spent an extra day training in San Jose after falling 3-2 in MLS play there Saturday, losing a 2-0 lead when goalkeeper David Ousted lost his mind and got red-carded for taking down Chris Wondolowski outside the penalty area during a breakaway.
Ousted’s automatic suspension will be applied to his next MLS game, Saturday in Vancouver against Toronto FC, and not tonight’s Champions League showdown.
Tigres are the reigning Liga MX champions, but are just 3-4-2 to start the winter season in Mexico. The expensive, star strikers to whom Robinson referred are French international Andre-Pierre Gignac and Chilean Eduardo Vargas. One website ranks Tigres 16th in the world.
Vancouver will be under immense pressure from kickoff and staying close to the Tigres will be a major achievement, although Robinson said Monday he thinks the Mexicans are “vulnerable.”
“It’s not easy getting in the semifinals and playing in Mexico against the best team in Mexico,” Waston, the central defender, said. “This is huge for us. I remember when I was in Costa Rica and Saprissa went there. That was something very big.
“I remember Bolanos scoring (against Pumas in 2005). Those moments, I want to live. This is going to be, I think, my biggest game. We are three steps before getting to the dream.”