The "other team" no more?
The Whitecaps most important season
It can be easy to forget the Vancouver Whitecaps sometimes. I don’t say this as banter, or to get a rise out of those of you on the West Coast. No, it’s just observation based on a decade plus of closely following the club.
They tend to get overlooked. There’s a bit of “little brother” syndrome going on in the two tree-team rivalries that they are associated with.
Sure, they have won a few Cascadia Cups over the years, but you know that they are the team that Seattle fans cheer for when they play Portland and that Timbers fans root for in games against the Sounders.
In Canada, well, Montreal and Toronto have been yelling at each other since about the 18th century. That type of sustained rivalry doesn’t often have room for a third.
In both cases they are the other. The third wheel. No matter how hard ‘Caps diehards might protest otherwise.
As a Torontonian, I will acknowledge that part of that is on us. We don’t think about Vancouver enough to bring the heat up from a rivalry standpoint. However, the Whitecaps haven’t really added much to the conversation over the years either.
Using 50 points as the measuring point of a good versus mediocre MLS season, the ‘Caps have only gone over that threshold twice in their MLS history. Their best season is just 53 points and that came in 2015, before the TAM era.
Since the start of the TAM era (which has seen a greater correlation between winning and spending than we saw previously), the ‘Caps have been non-factors. Not just in the rivalries highlighted above, but in the league. They’re just not competitive enough.
The highlight of this team’s existence is, by far, Alphonso Davies. And, that was the luck of geography and a very liberal homegrown exclusive zone. They didn’t screw it up, sure, but let’s not get carried away about what it said about the ability of the club to consistently produce talent.
This history of blah is made even worse by the sexual exploitation scandal that has rocked the club since it broke wide open in 2021. (This is a very serious and ongoing issue that needs to be properly addressed, but for the purpose of this article I’m only going to consider it on a sport level.)
Taking all of this into consideration — and the fact that there is finally another team in the market to challenge them for hearts and minds — it seems like the ‘Caps are at a crossroads. They cannot afford to be blah anymore. They must address the trust issue that they have as a result of the scandal and I don’t think they can expect to maintain their importance in the market, let alone grow it, without taking a step forward and actually showing that they are able to compete in MLS.
I don’t have a lot of faith that they are going to step up on the spending side. Owner, Jeff Mallett, is well known to be one of the MLS voices most opposed to the liberalization of league spending, after all. So, it’s going to need to be a combination of good development, good coaching and some players stepping up.
A perfect storm, in other words.
Lucky for Whitecaps’ fans, there’s a few clouds in the skies above BC this year.
They have some players to build around. Ryan Gauld is sneaky good — one of the most underrated players in the league. Julian Gressel is an established MLS player that stepped in and performed last year, despite being caught off guard by the trade from DC.
Brian White has scored in the league before. I’m not banking on him doing what he did at the end of 2021 again, but he can be solid.
I like Ryan Raposo’s upside. I could go on. The point is that this isn’t a team that needs to be built from the ground up. The pieces that they will start the season with are already there and are getting ready.
They have to be getting ready because they are in the CCL for just the third time. They punted on the competition the last two times, so hopefully they at least roll out the first team this year. They should, as it’s an opportunity to signal to the fanbase that they are serious and that they shouldn’t be given up on. There were signs late last year that the fans were ready to come back. The ‘Caps drew more than 19,000 for each of their last two home games (after drawing less than 15,000 for three of the previous five games at BC Place).
The Whitecaps do have an open DP slot, as well, but it doesn’t sound like they are going to use it before the summer, if at all. Instead, they are stressing the value of depth in their pre-season camp.
Talking to the Vancouver Province (paywall), manager Vanni Sartini said that he wants 22 players on the roster that are all capable of starting. That’s big talk, especially among teams of Vancouver’s size. However, they are backing it up. They have brought several players from Whitecaps 2 to Spain for pre-season.
Just having a VWFCII back in play is a significant improvement as compared to the last few years. The fall of the Whitecaps development side is more troubling than their mediocre play in MLS. For years they talked up the importance of their pyramid, without ever really following through on prioritizing it.
Some have suggested the ‘Caps affiliate and development programs were as much a marketing effort as they were designed to find players. That might be a tad too cynical, but Davies is very much an outlier in the history of the ‘Caps academy. For Sartini’s vision of 22 players pushing each other to come to fruition, they will need to step it up here.
All this may sound like I’m being negative about the ‘Caps prospects. I mean…that’s partially true. I don’t think this club sets itself up for success and, although there are new decision makers in place now, they are very much in “show me don’t tell me” territory as it relates to the long-term success, or the ability to truly contend for a MLS Cup, or, even less likely, a Supporters Shield.
For 2023, though, this is a team that could push for a third 50 point season. For a lot of Whitecaps fans, that will probably be enough to keep them interested. In turn, that will give them the chance to maybe make some moves to finally make them part of the conversation across MLS.
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