Hold off on eulogies — the Whitecaps aren’t dead and buried yet
Comeback record a ray of hope heading into Friday’s rematch with Toronto FC
The Vancouver Whitecaps have been dead and buried before.
And while Tuesday’s brutal 3-0 loss to Toronto certainly seemed like the gravediggers should polish up the tombstone and start engraving the 2020 epitaph — “Here lies VWFC. At least they tried” seems about right — there’s still a pulse in that body on the slab.
At first glance, the numbers are damning. Tuesday’s game was the 18th time in 45 games under coach Marc Dos Santos that the Caps have given up 20 or more shots a game, and they’ve conceded three or more goals in eight of those games, as per soccer writer Peter Galindo.
Over all, they’ve given up three or more goals in 14 of those 45 games, and 12 times since last July — four more than any other club in MLS.
OK, even at second glance, those numbers are grim. But how the Caps have responded to those allergic-to-defence losses is surprisingly positive.
Vancouver is 4-3-1 in games immediately after them, giving up just seven goals and posting four shutouts. (One elephant-sized caveat: This is excluding the nine-game winless streak the team went on from May 31-July 27, 2019, which included a five-game league losing streak and a defeat at the hands of CPL side Cavalry FC. It was a dark, dark time no Whitecaps fan wants to be reminded of ever again.)
The last time the Caps lost 3-0 was last month to the Seattle Sounders at the MLS is Back tournament in Orlando, Fla. In their next game, with no one giving them a chance of winning by at least two goals to make the knockout round, they pulled off a shocking-but-well-executed 2-0 win over the Chicago Fire.
That does give some a ray of hope heading into Friday’s rematch with TFC at BMO Place (5 p.m., TSN, TSN 1040) knowing the team is capable of making the adjustments to be more competitive with a Reds team that’s sitting second in the East.
Dos Santos has mainly employed a 4-4-2 formation this season, one that plays to the strengths of the personnel he has, and allows him to press the opponent while maintaining defensive shape. Against Toronto, it didn’t work.
The Reds had 75 per cent of the possession, were unbothered by the occasional high press from a disorganized Caps side and disrupted any attempts to play the ball, well, anywhere. Midfielders Russell Teibert (20) and Leo Owusu (27), patrolling the centre of the park, had just 47 passes between them.
Utility man Andy Rose, who started at centre-back, said the Caps need to be more compact in shape so they can fill the pockets of space that Toronto’s Pablo Piatti, Alejandro Pozuelo and Jozy Altidore took advantage of, while
giving them options to make short passes through the middle.
“They were the superior team on the night,” said Rose, who had team highs in passes (34), interceptions (five), clearances (five) and blocks (four).
“(When) they constantly keep possession of the ball, it certainly wears you down, and the moments when we then won it … I thought we were very poor in keeping (the ball) off first and second passes.
“You have to look at the whole package, and at times, for us to push up, make ground and start pushing into the opponent’s half, we need to be able to keep possession of the ball, we need to keep the first and second passes.
“If we’ve worked really hard to win the ball, and then we give it straight back, it’s very difficult for the back four to push up.”
In 2019, Vancouver led the league in shots surrendered at 20.1 per game. Six games into 2020 they’re still on top of the pile, at 20.2.
The bend-and-hopefully-don’tbreak philosophy hasn’t paid off, with the Caps surrendering the most goals in MLS so far (13, or 2.16 per game) and being tied for the worst negative goal differential, at minus six.
Only the winless Houston Dynamo and the L.A. Galaxy — both of whom have given up 11 goals — have a worse per-game goals against average, at 2.2.
Dos Santos hinted there might be a change in formation when his team faces Toronto on Friday, and his lineup could be bolstered by the return of Erik Godoy, who has yet to play a game this season due to injuries.
“We have to look at the shape of the team, have the ability to have the right … players in the moment to allow us to have the ball, because that’s the major problem,” said Dos Santos. “The major problem is, every time we had the ball, we gave it away so easily. So then we weren’t able to connect, we didn’t look dynamic. So I have to analyze with my performance group, with everyone what went wrong.”