Whitecaps look for answers ahead of TFC rematch
After pressing “pause” on the season, Vancouver Whitecaps coach Marc Dos Santos has spent the last two days hitting “rewind > play.”
The Whitecaps’ coach and his staff spent hours combing through the video wreckage of their 3-0 loss to Toronto FC on Tuesday, highlighting their mistakes, weaknesses and successes as they tried to come up with a game plan for tonight’s rematch.
“The way we pressed was incredibly disjointed. And then we allowed a lot of space to the opponent,” he said. “We addressed that side (of it) tactically in these two days, and made sure that we have an approach for the game that is much more cautious in what we have to do.”
When forwards Lucas Cavallini or Yordy Reyna pressured the TFC back line, too often the two players found themselves isolated with acres of space behind them for Toronto to exploit. The 4-4-2 formation the Caps had rolled out earlier this season didn’t operate the way it had in the win against the L.A. Galaxy before COVID-19 put the brakes on the season. Vancouver’s midfielders were unclear about the trigger moments, didn’t recognize the pressure of Cavallini or Reyna, or found themselves too far out of position.
“I thought we were able to (press) pause there, stay five months without working with the full group together … and then once we came back and had the majority of the guys together, I thought we would press ‘play’ and go on with what we did five months ago. It was wrong,” Dos Santos said.
“I took responsibility for that. And the players can tell you I took responsibility for that.
“The references of pressure were not clear, and they need to be very clear in a team. Half were going, half were not going, and when you have that, it’s the worst. You have to go with everybody or nobody goes.”
The 3-0 loss in the opening game of Phase 2 of Major League Soccer’s return to play saw Toronto have 75 per cent of the possession and overrun the Caps through the middle of the field, stifling Vancouver’s efforts to play the ball out of the back.
Winning the ball from Toronto wasn’t the team’s biggest issue — it was keeping it.
“When you have the ball, and you give it cheaply to the opponent an enormous amount of times during the game, what’s going to happen is you’re going to spend a lot of time defending, a lot of time dropping, and conceding more opportunities to the opponent,” said Dos Santos.
The Caps (2-4-0, eighth in the West) will likely switch up the formation and personnel for today’s game at BMO Field (5 p.m., TSN, TSN 1040) against the Reds (3-0-3, second in the East) in the second game of a three-game road swing.
Vancouver has deployed both a 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1 formation this season, but the possibility of a three-man backline is also there with the emergence of Andy Rose as a capable centre-back, as well as having Derek Cornelius and Jasser Khmiri available. Erik Godoy seems unlikely to play, with Dos Santos calling his season a “frustrating story.”
Having Rose as a No. 6 in a 4-3-3, or as part of a three-man backline, would support the midfield that had such issues in the first game — Rose had one of Vancouver’s two key passes, in comparison with Toronto’s 22 — as well as bolster the defence and give more options to transition forward.
“The midfielders are our players that are important to link if you want to build from the back four, linking with the forwards,” said Dos Santos. “But they have to be positionally in the right spots, and what we felt in the last game was playing with two midfielders with the characteristics of Rusty (Teibert) and Leo (Owusu) didn’t allow us to have a lot of exit through them. There weren’t a lot of times (they were) far from the ball, or getting away from the ball, and then we weren’t able to link with them.
“We’re going to be shaped in a different way, to not only deal better when we don’t have the ball with the numbers of TFC, but also have more options in our buildup.”