Whitecaps acquire striker, defender
The Vancouver Whitecaps were busy Friday, adding some snarl and spine to their back line with the signing of centre-back Erik Godoy and then adding some youthful scoring skill to their striker ranks by adding Uruguayan striker Joaquin Ardaiz on loan from Swiss club FC Chiasso.
The 20-year-old Ardaiz, who will be a young designated player on the Caps roster, is on a one-year loan with an option to buy.
“Joaquin is a young striker with a very high ceiling and has the physical and technical tools to succeed in MLS,” Whitecaps coach Marc Dos Santos said of the player, who represented Uruguay at the 2017 FIFA U-20 World Cup and scored twice for his country in the 2017 U-20 South American championship, which Uruguay won.
“Very, very promising when he was 17, 18, not that long ago,” Dos Santos told TSN 1040 radio on Friday afternoon. “Many, many European top clubs were looking at him.”
Dos Santos said he flew at the last minute to Uruguay after the MLS combine in Orlando, Fla., to see Ardaiz in person as the striker was training on his own at a facility in Montevideo.
“It’s a risk that could be a very high reward ... it’s a young player who is very hungry to get back to the highest level.”
A product of the Danubio FC academy in Uruguay, he played for the club’s senior side while a teenager. He moved to another Uruguay Primera Division club, Tanque Sisley, which lent him for a season to Royal Antwerp FC in Belgium.
In his one season as an 18-yearold with Royal Antwerp, he scored five times in 23 league, cup and Europa League appearances.
Tanque Sisley then sold him last summer to Chiasso, but he was immediately loaned to Italian Serie A club Cancio, where he made a solitary appearance.
The 25-year-old Godoy also joins the team on a one-year loan with an option to buy — reportedly US$1.5 million — from Argentina first-division club Atletico Colon through the use of targeted allocation money.
“Erik is a dynamic centre back with really good experience for his age,” Dos Santos said in a release.
“The Argentine league is an aggressive and intense league, a very competitive type of soccer. In watching Erik and talking to him, we felt that he suits well what we want to do here.”
Godoy, with eight years of experience in the Superliga Argentina, made 21 appearances, including 10 starts, for Colon in the 2018-19 season and has more than 140 starts with Club Atletico Tigre, Club Atletico Belgrano and Colon.