Vancouver Whitecaps

It only took the executives at MLS 12 years to figure out that the Pacific Northwest is the hotbed, and future, of soccer in America.

Yes, 2009 was when the revitalized Seattle Sounders joined the league to sold-out stadiums and rabid fans. Rather than watching thousands of empty seats in Chicago or New England, Qwest Field was continually sold out and the fans, well, were fanatical about their team.

In 2011, the Portland Timbers upped the ante by selling out every game of their inaugural 2011 season. Although not the size of Qwest Field, at 18,000 plus, Jeld-Wen field is still plenty big for the MLS.

The Timbers fans are even more rabid, and more obsessed, than their counterparts up the I-5. Watch one of the Timbers' games on TV and you would swear you were watching Liverpool in Anfield. The Timbers are, without a doubt, the biggest thing in Portland right now. How many other US cities can say that about their soccer team?

Also in 2011, the Vancouver Whitecaps joined MLS to sold-out stadiums. Yes, Canadians are by their nature more congenial, but their sold-out games have generated a great buzz in Vancouver, B.C.

The fact is that the Seattle-Portland rivalry is the best in the MLS—by a very, very wide margin.

The heartbeat of English soccer runs through Liverpool and Manchester—the American game runs through Portland and Seattle.

It's amazing that it took the so-called "experts" to figure out that the Pacific Northwest is the best place for soccer in America. If they would have looked at the old Sounders-Timbers-Whitecaps rivalries from the NASL in the 1970s and 1980s, they would have understood the deep roots of the game in the land of the evergreens.

I don't know why soccer is so massive in the PNW. Maybe it's the weather. Perhaps this much rain makes people want to kick something. Maybe it's the fact that there's much less competition from other sports. We don't have the baseball tradition in the East Coast or the obsession with American football in the Midwest and South.

Yes, they want soccer to be massive on the East Coast and in southern California. They want those television markets in Los Angeles and New York. The two soccer figureheads in the MLS, David Beckham and Thierry Henry, both play in Los Angeles and New York, respectively.

Heck, most people in the United States probably can't even find Oregon on a map, much less Canada.

The US soccer federation still hasn't learned from MLS mistakes. How many US soccer tournament games have been scheduled in the Pacific Northwest in the past few years?

That would be zero.

Apparently the higher ups would rather see a half-empty stadium at Ford Field in Detroit than a packed, crazy house at Jeld-Wen.

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

Wasn't it wonderful watching the US and Mexico play to a packed house in the Rose Bowl? Oh, that's right, a good 80 percent of the fans were rooting for Mexico. Oops.

That wouldn't happen at Qwest. You'd get a packed house rooting for the red, white and blue. No doubt.

Heck, they should have just scheduled the game in Mexico City.

It's embarrassing watching our home country being drowned out by visiting fans—even if those fans are from our neighbor down south.

Why is this so hard to figure out? All the energy in the MLS right now is coming from the Northwest. Portland, Seattle and Vancouver have ignited a fire that, quite frankly, the league has been waiting for since its inception.

It's not just the MLS—the amateur soccer in the PNW is, without a doubt, the best in the country. Every town and city has competitive and traveling teams. Dozens of soccer camps and clinics are held every summer.

Nike and Adidas both call Oregon their home.

The University of Portland, University of Washington and University of Oregon are all very good with the respective soccer programs.

Figure it out.

It only took the executives at MLS 12 years to figure out that the Pacific Northwest is the hotbed, and future, of soccer in America.

Yes, 2009 was when the revitalized Seattle Sounders joined the league to sold-out stadiums and rabid fans. Rather than watching thousands of empty seats in Chicago or New England, Qwest Field was continually sold out and the fans, well, were fanatical about their team.

In 2011, the Portland Timbers upped the ante by selling out every game of their inaugural 2011 season. Although not the size of Qwest Field, at 18,000 plus, Jeld-Wen field is still plenty big for the MLS.

The Timbers fans are even more rabid, and more obsessed, than their counterparts up the I-5. Watch one of the Timbers' games on TV and you would swear you were watching Liverpool in Anfield. The Timbers are, without a doubt, the biggest thing in Portland right now. How many other US cities can say that about their soccer team?

Also in 2011, the Vancouver Whitecaps joined MLS to sold-out stadiums. Yes, Canadians are by their nature more congenial, but their sold-out games have generated a great buzz in Vancouver, B.C.

The fact is that the Seattle-Portland rivalry is the best in the MLS—by a very, very wide margin.

The heartbeat of English soccer runs through Liverpool and Manchester—the American game runs through Portland and Seattle.

It's amazing that it took the so-called "experts" to figure out that the Pacific Northwest is the best place for soccer in America. If they would have looked at the old Sounders-Timbers-Whitecaps rivalries from the NASL in the 1970s and 1980s, they would have understood the deep roots of the game in the land of the evergreens.

I don't know why soccer is so massive in the PNW. Maybe it's the weather. Perhaps this much rain makes people want to kick something. Maybe it's the fact that there's much less competition from other sports. We don't have the baseball tradition in the East Coast or the obsession with American football in the Midwest and South.

Yes, they want soccer to be massive on the East Coast and in southern California. They want those television markets in Los Angeles and New York. The two soccer figureheads in the MLS, David Beckham and Thierry Henry, both play in Los Angeles and New York, respectively.

Heck, most people in the United States probably can't even find Oregon on a map, much less Canada.

The US soccer federation still hasn't learned from MLS mistakes. How many US soccer tournament games have been scheduled in the Pacific Northwest in the past few years?

That would be zero.

Apparently the higher ups would rather see a half-empty stadium at Ford Field in Detroit than a packed, crazy house at Jeld-Wen.

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

Wasn't it wonderful watching the US and Mexico play to a packed house in the Rose Bowl? Oh, that's right, a good 80 percent of the fans were rooting for Mexico. Oops.

That wouldn't happen at Qwest. You'd get a packed house rooting for the red, white and blue. No doubt.

Heck, they should have just scheduled the game in Mexico City.

It's embarrassing watching our home country being drowned out by visiting fans—even if those fans are from our neighbor down south.

Why is this so hard to figure out? All the energy in the MLS right now is coming from the Northwest. Portland, Seattle and Vancouver have ignited a fire that, quite frankly, the league has been waiting for since its inception.

It's not just the MLS—the amateur soccer in the PNW is, without a doubt, the best in the country. Every town and city has competitive and traveling teams. Dozens of soccer camps and clinics are held every summer.

Nike and Adidas both call Oregon their home.

The University of Portland, University of Washington and University of Oregon are all very good with the respective soccer programs.

Figure it out.

The Vancouver Whitecaps and New England Revolution battled to a 1-1 draw at Empire Field. Perhaps a draw is a fitting result, as both teams were not only competing with each other, but also with a referee who had delusions of grandeur. 

Perhaps if referee Baldomero Toledo wanted to have an impact on the match, he should have been a player, because he certainly affected the course of the match more than any of the players on either side with his heavy-handed and irrational calls.

A total of six yellow cards and three red cards, including two straight reds, were shown in a match that wasn’t overly physical and didn’t have many dangerous tackles I would think worthy of a yellow on most nights. (Disclaimer: I’m not a FIFA referee, but I do watch a lot of soccer, so either most other referees are incorrect in how they call the game, or Toledo is).

Let's take a look at the cards:

Six Minutes: Atiba Harris (Whitecaps)—booked for one of the first tackles of the match. Could have been a yellow, could have been just a foul—heavy-handed to issue a yellow without hesitation this early in the match, especially without any previous warnings or an injury.

14 Minutes: Ryan Cochrane (Revolution)—booked for dissent. There didn’t appear to be anything worthy of a card when viewed from the stands, just the usual complaint about a foul. But only Cochrane and Toledo know what was said, so maybe it was justified. Usually referees have pretty thick skin, though.

25 Minutes: Camilo (Whitecaps)—booked for diving. The card was shown as soon as Camilo went down. Hard to call this one diving, as Camilo (5’7”) was tangled up trying to split a pair of defenders who were six inches taller than him. Shouldn’t the reigning MLS player of the week get a little bit of respect here? Especially seeing as how this was the first time a player on either side was even warned for diving, let alone carded.

40 Minutes: Zack Schilawski (Revolution)—again, another yellow card for dissent. I’m seeing a pattern here.

45 Minutes: Gershon Koffie (Whitecaps)—the first, but not last, red card of the night. Koffie and and Pat Phelan of the Revolution both went up for a header, and there was incidental contact with Koffie’s upper arm and Phelan’s head. Toledo again didn’t show any restraint in immediately pulling out a red card. This wasn’t an elbow to face; just normal contact between two big guys both going for the same ball in the air. At most, it's a foul or yellow card on Koffie, not a straight red. You can see the same sort of contact off any corner kick.

Vancouver is now a man down.

49 Minutes: Eric Hassli is booked for... I don’t know what he was booked for. An elbow? Apparently Toledo didn’t know either, as he originally called a foul on Alston as both he and Hassli were fighting for control of the ball near the sidelines. Toledo called the foul of Alston, and awarded Vancouver a free kick. Then, as Toledo approaches, he noticed that Alston had a bloody (possibly broken) nose, and gave Hassli a yellow. 

Now on replay it seems clear that while they were tangled up, Alston was fouling Hassli, but Hassli did throw an elbow back that caught Alston in the face as he stumbled.

My problem with this scenario is that Toledo did NOT see the foul. If he did, he would have carded Hassli immediately given his quick judgements earlier in the game and not awarded Vancouver a free kick. Toledo didn’t confer with any of the other officials who might have had a better view, he just saw the bloody nose and immediately carded Hassli. 

How can you call a foul and book someone when you didn’t see the actual violation or at least talk it over with one of the other officials who did see it? For all Toledo knew, Alston could have had a bloody nose from hitting the pitch or running into Hassli’s shoulder as he fouled him. 

And the original free kick to Vancouver? Toledo let that stand. And how does that make sense? If Hassli got the yellow, then how did the Whitecaps get a free kick out of it?

56 Minutes: Hassli gets a second yellow and is then ejected. Now this is about the only card shown in the game that I don’t have a problem with. 

Hassli scored a goal off a penalty, and then took off his jersey and threw it into the crowd in celebration. That is an automatic yellow. Stupid move on Hassli’s part, but I can only assume in the heat of the moment after scoring the goal he had a brain cramp and forgot about the yellow he already had.

For those keeping track, the Whitecaps are now up 1-0 at this point in the game, but now are down two(!) men.

74 Minutes: A.J. Soares (Revolution) picks up the second straight red card of the match.  Now keep in mind my obvious bias as a Whitecaps fan. This was not worthy of a red card.

Soares comes in diagonally from behind and on the right side of Atiba Harris along the sidelines.  With cleats down,  he slides in and gets the ball first, then takes down Harris. This was not a scoring play. This was not a dangerous tackle. At most, it could be worthy of a yellow given the precedent set with the first card of the match.

Again, no hesitation or consultation with the other officials, as Toledo shows an immediate red card before Harris and Soares even have a chance to get to their feet.

All in all, this was brutal officiating. 

Six yellows, one ejection from accumulated cards and two straight red cards in a game.  If the referee had only exercised a little judgement, restraint or just a light hand in controlling the match, the game maybe had three fouls worthy of a yellow.

The Whitecaps were down a man for 45 minutes.  For 18 of those minutes, they were down two men. After trading chances in the first half, the Whitecaps sat back in a 4-4-1 formation (later 4-3-1) and defended tenaciously while counter-attacking whenever possible to keep the play in the opposing end.

Eventually, the Revolution scored a goal in injury time to tie it up. 

Giving up any points due to a late goal in injury time hurts. But honestly, when the second half started, and the Caps were looking at a 0-0 score, but down a man, I thought a draw would be a pretty good result. 

Even when up 1-0 but down two men, I was still thinking a draw is the best result possible. 

After all, how many times do you see a team lose when their their opponent has to play two men short?

So as a fan, I can accept the 1-1 draw as a good result given the circumstances. The game was still entertaining, and the Whitecaps and Revolution had to battle not only each other, but also the whims of Toledo.

I’m looking forward to watching the Whitecaps play the Houston Dynamo this Sunday in their second road game of the season. Hopefully this time the referee isn’t determined to be the star of the match.

Typically an expansion team in North American sports is a brand new franchise without any history. The roster is composed of disparate players deemed expendable by their previous club and exposed in an expansion draft, a handful of journeymen signed as free agents and a few rookies. The expansion team is offensively challenged, and doesn’t really have an identity or chemistry.

That isn’t the case with the Vancouver Whitecaps.

The Whitecaps and their expansion brethren Portland Timbers, like the Seattle Sounders before them, are new to the MLS, but not new to professional soccer. The Whitecaps, Timbers and Sounders all played in USSF-Division 2 (the former USL) prior to moving up to the top tier soccer in MLS. This is a situation more akin to a team being promoted to a higher division in European soccer than a typical North American expansion team. 

14 of the 29 players on the roster were with the Whitecaps last year in USSF D-2. 9 of those players have played significant minutes in the three games so far. 

M Terry Dunfield (270 minutes) 1 goal, 1 assist

M Gershon Koffie (270 minutes)

D Alain Rochat (270 minutes)

G Jay Nolly (180 minutes)

D/M Blake Wagner (180 minutes)

M Nizar Khalfan (160 minutes) 2 assists

D Greg Janicki (154 minutes)

M Russell Teibert (134 minutes)

D Wes Knight (115 minutes) 1 assist

M/F Davide Chiumiento (66 minutes) 3 assists

D Mouloud Akloul

M Philippe Davies

M Alexandre Morfaw

G Brian Sylvestre

Chiumiento would have played more than 66 minutes if he wasn’t hampered by an early injury. Similarly, Akloul would have been starting as a central defender if not hampered by a broken ankle last year that required three surgeries before he was finally able to start training again. 

Another player, D/M Kevin Harmse, played for the Houston Dynamo last season, but is a Vancouver native and played for the Whitecaps in USSF D-2 earlier in his career.

Aside from developing players in USSF D-2 play last year, some of the players, notably Teibert, are also graduates of the Whitecaps residency program for youth players.

When you take a deeper look at the players that have played for the Whitecaps last year and that also have played significant minutes this year, you can see that they are mainly all midfield or defender positions, with the exception of starting keeper Jay Nolly. This gives the Whitecaps experience and chemistry on most of the pitch, and allows them to play with a solid structure that provides great support to the forwards.

The Whitecaps were panned for their offensive ability prior to opening day, as critics and analysts thought they would struggle to put any goals on the scoreboard.

This clearly isn’t the case, as designated player Eric Hassli had two goals on opening day to help crush the visiting Toronto FC 4-2. Brazilian Camilo had two goals in injury time to earn both a 3-3 draw against Sporting KC, as well as MLS Player of the Week honors. Atiba Harris has been the most consistent forward, and he has two goals and three assists in three games. 

Harris and Chiumiento lead the MLS in assists with three apiece. Seven different Whitecaps have hit the scoresheet with either a goal or an assist as the Whitecaps have scored seven goals in only three games, a goal total which is second in the league.

Vancouver has unfortunately given up six goals against in those same three games though, which would appear to argue against what I stated above about the returning defenders and midfielders.

However, injury and national team call ups have played a role in the goals against.

Captain Jay DeMerit (US) and fellow central defender Michael Boxall (New Zealand) both missed week two due to national team duty. DeMerit picked up a groin injury during his two game stint with the US national team, and is currently sidelined. Boxall returned to Vancouver to play against Sporting KC, but was admittedly lacking in energy after battling the flu and jetlag from flying to and from China for the international friendly.

Similarly, Greg Janicki is battling a hip injury, and while he started against Sporting KC, he stood before the media after the game and took the blame for two of the goals against, saying that he should have taken himself out of the game earlier.

Another player who could expect to start as a central defender is Mouloud Akloul, who is currently training after offseason surgery on a broken ankle.

Once even a few of these players are healthy, the backline should be much more solid, as it was on opening weekend.

Aside from the players actually on the pitch, the Whitecaps also benefit from a team identity that is often lacking in expansion sides.

The Whitecaps are the oldest professional soccer club in North America, having been in continuous professional play at various levels from their origins in the NASL in 1974 to the current day MLS incarnation. While winning the NASL Soccer Bowl in 1979 is probably the crowning achievement for the franchise, the Whitecaps also won six other titles in franchise history, including a USSF-D2 title in 2008. 

The 2008 team that won the title, as well as the 2009 team that made the finals only to fall to the Montreal Impact (who will enter MLS next season), contained many of the current Whitecaps, such as Wes Knight.

Coach Teitur Thordarson was also on those teams, having been named Head Coach in 2007. This continuity in coaching and strategy has also helped the Caps in their inaugural MLS season.

Vancouver also has a rabid soccer fan base, with the Whitecaps having regularly sold out their previous (smaller) stadium in USSF-D2, and having drawn an average of 21,555 fans to their two home games to date, placing them third in attendance behind Seattle and LA.

The Whitecaps acknowledged their fans for spurring them on to the improbable comeback from 3-0 to draw Sporting KC 3-3.

“The support was incredible because normally [down] 3-0 after 70 minutes, the supporters start to go home,” said midfielder Davide Chiumiento, who has played in the Swiss Super League, French Ligue 1 and Italian Serie A during his career . “It was a big help from them.”

All in all, the Whitecaps are not a typical expansion team. And while being 1-1-1 is a bit lucky (you can’t count on your opponent to fold a 3-0 lead in injury time every week), teams shouldn’t expect the Whitecaps to be an easy game on the schedule.

Count on the Whitecaps to continue to play entertaining soccer and challenge for a playoff spot.

Game Day Notes:

Tonight the Whitecaps host the New England Revolution at Empire Field.

DeMerit and Janicki are not going to dress for the game, but Chiumiento is healthy and will start on the wing.

For the visitors, starting keeper Matt Reis did not make the trip with an injury.

I'll post a review of the game later tonight.