Dos Santos wants Whitecaps to become much tougher on road
Oh, what could have been. The fine line between victory and defeat, the playoffs and irrelevance.
The L.A. Galaxy held a 2-0 lead on the Houston Dynamo, looking comfortable and in control in their final game of the 2018 Major League Soccer regular season, just a mere 45 minutes from qualifying for the playoffs.
But a second-half collapse resulted in a 3-2 loss, and Real Salt Lake — 3-0 losers to Portland in their finale the week before — leapfrogged the Galaxy into the final playoff berth in the West.
Few gave RSL a chance in their opening-round match with LAFC, but they put together a vintage Vancouver Whitecaps performance — being outshot 20-4, outpossessed 63 to 37 per cent, a 10-1 imbalance in corner kicks — to beat the Black and Gold.
Marc Dos Santos could only watch from his spot on the bench as an LAFC assistant coach as Damir Kreilach’s pair of goals — including a Karate Kid crane kick golazo from 22 yards — and an own goal pushed the playoff minnows past the expansion darlings.
“At the end when the whistle blew, I think you could see on our faces just the shock of the cruelty and reality of what our situation was,” L.A.’s Walker Zimmerman, who deflected in the game-winner, told mlssoccer.com after the match.
The Claret and Cobalt also came within inches of an away goal that would have put them through against Sporting Kansas City in the semifinals, but K.C. did just enough to go through in the second game of the two-leg series.
Now Dos Santos is taking his fledgling team to Sandy, Utah, to face RSL in the Whitecaps’ first road game of the season Saturday. The Whitecaps have won only once in 10 games at Rio Tinto Stadium, getting outscored 15-6.
“Salt Lake is a team that has a core that’s been together for a while. It’s a very similar team to the one that reached the semifinal of the conference and was very close to knocking out Sporting Kansas City,” said Dos Santos.
“They ’re a team that is very dangerous in the counter-attack, has fast pieces that we need to be aware of. We need to be aware when we’re in possession … and when we lose the ball, how fast they can break. That’s one of their strengths, for sure.”
No team in the West had a better home record than Real (11-2-4) last season, and last week’s 3-2 loss to Minnesota at B.C. Place Stadium showed the Caps have a long way to go before they’ll be in a position to consistently challenge, well, just about anybody.
“They’re a tough team to play at their barn — that’s a hockey term, but I like it — they have a set philosophy
as well,” said midfielder Russell Teibert, who watched last week from the players’ box with an injury.
“The style that we play this year with possession soccer, we want to out-pass teams, and we want to dictate the game. And we showed that we can at times.
“What I saw from the stands was a positive team, and exciting team, with a lot of potential. Obviously this system is going to take a lot of work, but we’re prepared to do that work. It’s a work in progress.”
The work this week focused again on the defensive principles and reaction, two areas that caught Vancouver flat against Minnesota, who scored two of their goals off of Whitecaps turnovers.
The Caps also missed some moments against the Loons that were triggers in the coach’s desired style of defensive pressure and transition moments.
How well they can adapt will prove key against a side that has explosive speed on its wings, an exceptional and creative roving No. 10 in Albert Rusnak, and a striker in Kreilach who can score from just about anywhere.
“You have to take the positives of the game, reinforce them, ( but) not be delusional, and go back to the negative things and show the players through video and address them … and continue in the process and be coherent with that,” said Dos Santos.
“What we have to be careful of is when we have the ball. When we (do), we have to have it with a purpose … and in a way that if we lose it, where their important pieces are. So, our block, when we don’t have the ball, how we sit, how compact we are, that’s going to be important.”
Dos Santos has preached patience as the Whitecaps struggle through the inevitable Bambi-onice process that comes with being a team adopting a new identity and trying to integrate a host of new players. That is, he expects everyone to be patient but himself.
“I’m not patient. I’m not patient,” he admitted. “I’m always very involved, very on the players. My job is to try and make it work. If I think about patience, I’m giving myself a little bit of loose (slack). No, no. Tomorrow is a final. Saturday is another final. Let’s deal with Saturday.
“We already know it’s a new group, it’s a process, it’s going to take time. That’s why I don’t want to talk about (patience).”