Getting Reacquainted with the Vancouver Whitecaps, Cascadia's Afterthought

"I forgot I had to bring something."

Thumbnail History
To begin, the Vancouver Whitecaps have never had a great season. That’s a big thing to hold in the back of your mind anytime you see a pundit push them toward the hype train before or during any given season. Over 14 MLS seasons, the ‘Caps have not once advanced past the quarterfinals in the playoffs. On the one hand, yes, they reached the CONCACAF Champions’ League semifinals in 2017 – which took beating peak, if off-season Red Bull New York (e.g., the Red Bulls won the Shield again in 2018) – on the other hand…c’mon, who gave ‘em a snowball’s chance of beating Tigres UANL or Pachuca CF to win the whole thing? A gentler scale than mine might have rewarded them for four wild card appearances (2012, 2014, 2021, and 2024), but I call them “Joy Points” for a reason - i.e., stalling at the quarterfinals the two times you make them spells “s-u-c-c-e” at most, as opposed to “success.” It’s been a slog for them, basically, and yet Vancouver has had their players. Alphonso Davies, who unwittingly auditioned for Bayern Munich by playing for Vancouver, tops the list, of course (and, lord, was he a blast to watch), but that list gets pretty damn short from there. Despite all of the promising candidates that have auditioned for the No. 10 jersey (or its equivalent role) - Camilo Sanvezzo comes to mind, Ryan Gauld can’t be avoided, of course (also don’t think he actually wears No. 10) and, um…Davide Chiumiento? - the ‘Caps have struggled more than most MLS teams with landing “impact players,” particularly on the attacking side of the pitch. Lest they be accused of not trying, Vancouver has also gone with signing battering ram forwards to increase goal production - think Eric Hassli and Lucas Cavallini – but Hassli neither did much nor lasted very long, and Cavallini’s chief talent was pissing off opposition CBs. At any rate, none of it came all the way off (see below) and the length of that short list only underscores the 'Caps' ongoing failure to get enough things right. I could walk through the same issue in the defense, name some names, and so on…but, well, what’s the point? Long story (very) short, the Whitecaps have never managed to squeeze enough of good players onto the same roster, or to hire a coach who could squeeze that little something extra out of the players that they did have available. The end, if until they finally get that new beginning.

Total Joy Points: 0 (lifted to zero by Canadian Championships, fwiw)

How They Earned Them (& How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 2015, 2017
Wooden Spoon: 2011
CCL Semifinals: 2017
CCL Quarterfinals: 2023
Canadian Championships: 2015, 2022, 2023, 2024

Long-Term Tendencies
To state it plainly, Vancouver has been under the average for goals scored nine times (very under (e.g., 10+) four times) over their 14 seasons in MLS. They’re better on the defensive side, historically, but they also a succession of bad to shit defenses between 2016 and 2022 (aka, about half their history), and, not for the first time, those two sentences put numbers to Vancouver’s fairly inglorious history, until further notice, etc.

Given Vancouver's history, can you blame them?

How 2024 Measured Up
Snark aside, I do get why the few pundits I read saw potential in Vancouver’s 2024 (and, if memory serves) 2023 rosters. They look balanced enough, what with and with Gauld running the show, Brian White running (a mini-) riot up top, Andres Cubas playing a strong two-way game in the heart of midfield, Ali Ahmed and Samuel Adekugbe working the flanks, and Fafa Picault for a wild card, they looked plausibly constructed, even in real time…and yet, did I just list every player on last season’s roster that tracks as “league-competitive”? To pick at a wound a little, the ‘Caps looked a lot like the Timbers last season, in that, some strays aside – there, I’m thinking of the stretch between June 30 and the beginning of September, when they picked up 10 points in road games against direct competitors (e.g., Minnesota, St. Louis and Austin) from 12 available points (fwiw, Montreal was the other team in that run of games) - most of the success they had came from beating weaker teams. Small wonder, then, that when the competition got taller over the last nine games of 2024, Vancouver wilted to the tune of a 1-5-3 end to the season. Whatever hope they had of hosting a home game in the 2024 playoffs died over that stretch, which brings the story to the punchline. Even after all that stumbling, the Whitecaps pipped the still-worse Timbers in the final Western Conference standings and earned the right to host the wild-card play-in...only they didn't get to do that thanks to a scheduling conflict with (I’m pretty sure) a moto-cross event (nice faith in the product, BC Place owners/operators/schedulers). That sent Vancouver on the road as "the home team" at Providence Park…which, factually, worked out great for them, judging by the cleated boot-print that, by all rights, should be tattooed into the ass of every Portland Timbers player on the 2024 roster so that they never forget their 0-5 collapse at home, despite all of the advantages, in the preliminary round of the 2024 MLS Cup playoffs…which is my…going with sixth formative experience as a soccer fan. I'M OKAY, ARE YOU OKAY?!

Questions for Their 2025 Season
While Vancouver hasn’t lost anyone they couldn’t afford to lose – e.g., Levonte Johnson, Ryan Raposo, Alessandro Schopf (who fans seemed to hate) – they also have yet to add much to a roster that, by my math, landed about where it should have in 2024. In a league/world where all the other teams stood still, that wouldn’t matter nearly as much, but even the goddamn Earthquakes are making moves, even if mostly on the coaching side and tall order of “bringing the old gang together for one last big score” (and, I'm betting, without the Hollywood ending). With Vanny Sartini fired after last season, it’s entirely possible that Vancouver has opted to keep things open for whomever they hire as the next head coach and, related, maybe they’re thinking more long-term than short, a choice that strikes me as good and wise, honestly. That said, one point of this project involves figuring out how heavily a given team’s history might weigh on the shoulders of everyone in their particular organization, all the way from the front office down to the people who do everything they can to wash the stench of defeat out of the players clothing.