It’s Reyna-ing goals in the Pacific Northwest
Wild-haired Peruvian is a force for Caps anywhere he finds himself on the pitch
Three starts for Yordy Reyna, three games undefeated.
There’s no mistaking the little Peruvian with the wild orange (is that the colour?) hair — and we’re not just talking about his look.
In nearly every appearance this season — Saturday was just his third start, with another five games off the bench — he’s made an impact.
Saturday, he scored what turned out to be the winning goal in a 2-1 win over the Western Conferenceleading Houston Dynamo. But there’s so much more. He drew seven fouls on Saturday, for instance. (He’s now averaging 2.5 per game.)
One of those was the penalty that Fredy Montero bagged to open the scoring for the Whitecaps. And as a team, the Whitecaps completed 85 per cent of their passes; 10 points above their season average.
For a team that looks to let the other team get the lion’s share of possession, having better passing was always going to be a needed thing. If Reyna can maintain his influence, that bodes well for the
team’s playoff push. So, surely his presence in the lineup isn’t a coincidence. This is why he was signed in the off-season. You can’t help but wonder how the early stages of the season might have been different if he’d not broken his foot in the final pre-season match in Portland.
Reyna has pushed opposing defences toward their own goal, opening up space underneath. Tony Tchani’s passing completion rate has showed a marked improvement since Reyna’s arrival; that may be coincidental, but in tandem the two players have brought a consistency to the Whitecaps’ attack that wasn’t there before.
Player-activity heat maps show him popping up all over the park. He’s not a striker ... but he’s not exactly a midfielder either.
What we do know, is he runs with the ball at his feet as if he were in a video game and the player controlling him keeps pushing turbo.
“If I get a chance to score a goal, I’m going to do it,” Reyna told The Canadian Press last month. “If I can pass to a teammate, I’m going to do it, but the important thing is that the team gets wins.”
Andrew Jacobson has seen firsthand what Reyna can do.
“He’s a difference-maker,” he said. “We had him in pre-season, so we got a little glimpse of it. The game he got hurt, he was playing fantastic, so we got to see it and then it got taken away. And now he’s starting to come into his own.”
Reyna was a big signing in the off-season, but his injury made for some stopgap planning by the Whitecaps until last month, when he made his spectacular debut, scoring on a diving header to win a 3-2 thriller against NYCFC.
Given how much of the season he missed, it’s almost as if Reyna is a midsummer signing for Carl Robinson. Now Reyna just has to mesh with attacking partner Fredy Montero. It was pressure from Montero that forced the turnover that led to Reyna’s wonder strike from the top right corner of the penalty area.
“I think him and Yordy are building a nice little bit of chemistry, and it’ll come,” Robinson said.
“In tight games ... you need your players to step up. That’s the reason why I brought them in.”