Kiwi Bevan latest to join Whitecaps
In less than a week, the Whitecaps have added three new strikers to the mix.
The latest is New Zealand-born Myer Bevan, who the Whitecaps confirmed Wednesday as their latest signing.
Bevan, 20, joined WFC2 last summer and played 13 times for the Whitecaps’ now-defunct development team, scoring three times.
A product of the Nike Football Academy in England, Bevan has also played for Western Springs AFC and Auckland City FC in his homeland.
Bevan holds Canadian citizenship and thus counts as a domestic player under Major League Soccer roster rules.
Playing at the Nike academy gave Bevan a “good grounding,” Whitecaps assistant coach Gordon Forrest said about the young forward.
“He’s very energetic, very hard working as number 9. He tries to get in behind the other team’s defenders. We’re hoping he continues to develop that way.
“And of course we hope he scores some goals.”
The young Kiwi joins the Whitecaps just three days after the club added Kei Kamara and a week after signing Venezuelan Anthony Blondell. It’s a reshaping of the team’s attacking corps.
Bevan doesn’t figure to play a lot but one step at a time, Forrest said.
“It’s great to get him in that position,” he said. “Hopefully he can watch and learn from a guy like Kei Kamara.”
Bevan is part of a wave of soccer talent coming out of a country better known as a rugby powerhouse.
“The country made a big push to try and develop young players,” Forrest explained. The Scotsman worked in youth development in New Zealand, so he saw first hand the efforts to push the top end of the game as well as to simply get more people playing.
As for why the Whitecaps keep turning their eyes down under, “we have to scout in as many places as we can,” he said. The club has a lot of connections in New Zealand and Bevan is just the latest result of that.