VANCOUVER—As they welcome the Houston Dynamo for a Saturday afternoon matchup at BC Place, the Vancouver Whitecaps will be facing a familiar predicament: how to handle a thinned-out roster.
Three key players are away on international duty, as Kendall Waston, Christian Bolanos and Blas Perez have departed to join their national teams in preparation for the Copa America. And there are injury concerns, with right fullback Fraser Aird having picked up a bone bruise two weeks ago in Vancouver’s win over Toronto FC.
It’s a situation with which coach Carl Robinson is used to dealing.
“It is what it is,” he said this week. “You can’t complain over it. You’ve got to deal with it—we will deal with it. Players will come in, there’ll be a little bit of freshness in the team.”
If anything, the bigger problem, in Robinson’s view, will be figuring out how to avoid the variety of costly errors that have led the Whitecaps to concede 24 goals in 14 matches so far in their Major League Soccer campaign.
“If you actually look at individual errors—far, far too many, so we need to cut them out,” Robinson said. “If we cut them out we’ve got half a chance.”
It’s a simple formula that seems promising when you consider Vancouver’s opponent this weekend: the Dynamo have yet to earn a point on the road this season. Their 3-7-2 record puts them at the bottom of the Western Conference standings, and the situation grew so dire that this week, the team announced it had parted ways with coach Owen Coyle—a mutually agreed upon decision, apparently.
That leaves assistant coaches Wade Barrett, Paul Caffrey and Paul Rogers to manage the team on Saturday in Vancouver. It will be interesting to see how the Dynamo respond to the shakeup. Will they be in disarray? Or will the trio of assistant coaches combine, Voltron-style, to provide managerial brilliance to a Houston side desperate to finally grab a point or three from a road match?
Robinson, for his part, knows not to underestimate any MLS team.
“Sometimes you go through runs where you don’t get results, and away from home they haven’t got as many results as they would like,” he said. “But they’re a dangerous team, they’ve got good players. So we have to be absolutely spot on.”
Kekuta Manneh, who is riding a hot streak of late with three goals and two assists across the last two matches, agreed that the Dynamo can be dangerous. (It seems ages ago, but there was a time earlier this season when the team was capable of a thrashing: Back in March, Houston had a show of dominance, defeating FC Dallas 5–0. That remains the most goals any home team has scored this season in MLS.)
“Houston is a good team, no doubt,” Manneh said. “They’re very physical, and very direct. We’re just gonna have to figure out ways where we can exploit their weaknesses and hopefully win the game.”
Manneh echoed his coach’s message about avoiding errors, which is another way of saying the ’Caps will need to regain the focus and composure they showed in their three-game winning streak prior to their recent loss in Portland.
“The players, we keep on each other, saying we need to focus,” Manneh explained. “But it’s not just saying—we actually need to start doing it.”
Despite the concerns over sloppy plays, not to mention flared tempers, the Whitecaps will have a massive home advantage, which should help them even as they field a starting XI without players such as Bolanos, whose creative spark—he’s tied with Manneh for second-most goals on the team behind captain Pedro Morales—will be missed. The Dynamo, at least, won’t have all their best players available either. Giles Barnes, who leads the team with four goals this season, is off preparing for the Copa America, too.
Errors aside, the Whitecaps aren’t exactly looking to bounce back. They looked disorganized in the loss against Portland, but despite conceding four goals, it wasn’t exactly a disastrous performance. Rather, the team seemed mediocre. As Robinson said, “We didn’t play bad, but we didn’t play good.”
Mediocre, of course, isn’t good enough to get by in a league—and especially a division—with so much parity. As Vancouver forward Erik Hurtado, who has started two matches in a row now, acknowledged: “On any given day, any team can win in this league. So we’ve just got to keep that in mind. We’ve got to focus on us.”
If parity means that no team really receives too much of an advantage, though, history at least favours the home side. The last time these two teams met up, at BC Place on March 26, Vancouver earned a 1–0 win. That was two months ago, but in Manneh’s view, that win gives his team an advantage in their second of three meetings with Houston this season.
“We beat them here,” Manneh said. “I think we’ll have that confidence going into that game—that we have an edge on them.”
Sportsnet’s Soccer Central podcast (featuring Thomas Dobby, Brendan Dunlop, John Molinaro and James Sharman) takes an in-depth look at the beautiful game and offers timely and thoughtful analysis on the sport’s biggest issues.
