Struggling team must try to learn from mistakes
Team sits in Western Conference cellar after winning just one of last 10 matches
It is a difficult task to ignore the past while still trying to learn from it.
They say mistakes are the greatest teacher. By that measure, if you take their past two Major League Soccer games, the Vancouver Whitecaps should have earned a PhD in what not to do.
A 6-1 shaming at the hands of LAFC was one of the worst losses in team history. A 3-0 defeat, at home, to a peer in the Major League Soccer standings in Sporting Kansas City — a game whose importance to their fading playoff hopes couldn’t have been overstated — was as painfully frustrating as it was ignominious.
The 1-0 loss to Seattle and a 0-0 draw with Cavalry FC were just Salt Bae sprinkling a little NaCl in the wound.
“The truth is that what we speak about is there is not a lot of reason or time to dwell on the last game. We have to address it, like we did today as a group, but also move forward, because the next game is what counts the most,” Caps coach Marc Dos Santos said Tuesday, as his team prepared for this afternoon’s match with the New England Revolution in Foxborough, Mass.
With 13 games remaining, the Whitecaps (4-9-8, 20 points) are last in the Western Conference, nine points behind seventh-place FC Dallas, with a goal differential (-12) and points-per game average (0.95) both worst in the west.
Last year’s seventh-place finisher (L.A. Galaxy) has 48 points, meaning the Caps will need to pick up around 28 over their final 2½ months to make the playoffs.
That’s a tough ask for a team with one win in its last 10 league games, is winless in six, and had its head coach apologize for his side’s wilting effort in the first half of Saturday’s loss to Sporting.
Sportsclubstats.com has the Whitecaps’ odds of making the post-season at just 0.5 per cent, better only than the Columbus Crew’s 0.3 per cent.
“Based on our last two games, it’s important that we focus a lot on us … and what we’ve been doing in the last two games and how much we’ve been disjointed, disconnected and that’s not something that we showed before the international break,” said Dos Santos, whose team has been outscored 10-1 in its three-game losing streak.
“What I want to see tomorrow is growth. Yes, it’s important to win. Yes, we want to win. But more important than that, we want to see growth from what we did in the past two games. Growth as a team. That has to happen.”
It doesn’t require any expert insight to see from those comments he and the team know the miraculous turnaround it would take to make the post-season, even if there are a slew of examples of teams setting the second half on fire:
Seattle Sounders, 2018: Had just
■ three wins (3-9-3) through the end of July. Wound up finishing second in the west, hosting a playoff game, after going 15-2-2 down the stretch.
D.C. United, 2018: The capitol
■ squad didn’t get its third win until July 14 (3-7-5) when they beat the Whitecaps 3-1. Went 11-4-4 the rest of the way, and made the playoffs.
Montreal Impact, 2018: Started
■ the year 4-11, including two fourgame losing streaks, and came into Decision Day needing a win to make the post-season, but fell just short in a 1-0 loss to Vancouver’s opponent this afternoon, New England.
Seattle Sounders, 2017: Were
■
5-7-4 in June, but lost just twice the rest of the season, making the MLS final after a playoff run that included knocking the Caps out in the west semis.
Seattle Sounders, 2016: Perhaps
■ the most cited example of “never give up,” the boys from the Emerald City were nine points out of the playoffs on July 24, having suffered through a 12-game winless streak. But 14 games (8-2-4) later, the Sounders made the playoffs as a fourth seed, going on to win it all.
The caveats, and you had to know they were coming, is they all required some massive change or addition.
In 2016, Seattle was 6-12-2 under Sigi Schmidt, until Brian Schmetzer replaced him as coach and playmaker Nico Lodeiro was brought in. The 2017 Sounders were ravaged by injuries until they got healthy. And in 2018, the team went on an eight-game win streak after Raul Ruidiaz was signed.
D.C. United’s fortunes changed with that 3-1 win over Vancouver last season, as it marked their first game at home and the debut of Wayne Rooney.
They had played 15 games on the road in 4½ months.
The transfer window is open, and what the Whitecaps do could determine their fate for this season, though it appears their goal remains the long-term success and viability of the squad.
They appear to have the right coach in place in Dos Santos.
He hopes to change the fabric of the Caps.
“We have to make sure that we’re ready (for New England),” he said.
“I think our guys are going to show what they’re made of mentally. I believe in that.”