The Vancouver Whitecaps have made history by becoming the first Canadian team to qualify for Major League Soccer’s playoffs.
All right, we’ve heard it, it’s over now. You’re in and now the real task begins.
If you would have asked me back in June how the Whitecaps would finish this season, I would have said they’d comfortably clinch a playoff spot by sitting in third place or higher, and they would not have to lay it all out on the line like they will have to do in Thursday night’s road game against the LA Galaxy.
During the second half of the season, the Whitecaps were in a rough patch. They couldn’t score, didn’t get results, and a lot of changes surrounded the team. But they did do one thing they set out to do in the beginning of the year, which was to make the MLS playoffs.
Now the hard part comes: winning in LA.
No more of this "there’s one more game attitude," or waiting for another team to do your dirty work. It’s now or never for the Whitecaps in LA.
Captain Jay DeMerit has called out his teammates this season saying there have been times where only seven or eight players show up for big games, and the skipper is right. If there was one time this season that the Whitecaps need to put all their differences aside (trust me there are many) it’s Thursday.
What better way to do it against a team that not a lot of MLS fans like?
Sure, David Beckham is there, so is Landon Donovan and Robbie Keane, along with a coach in Bruce Arena who knows his team is great. Bluntly, this Galaxy squad oozes arrogance.
Remember when Barry Robson got into Beckham’s face earlier this season? To channel my inner David Pratt: "How good was that?"
Not only did the Whitecaps come out to play that game on July 18, they came out and showed they weren’t going to take anything from LA. That is exactly how the Whitecaps will have to approach Thursday’s contest.
Quickly taking a look back at the season, if you were to pinpoint one time or one game where the Whitecaps may have played their best football ever, it would be versus the Galaxy.
Vancouver has proved it can play with the best in MLS, it can compete with the best, but in order to be the best you need to beat the best.
It raises the question: which Whitecaps team will show up on Thursday?
Will it be the team that competed fiercely vs. LA and beating San Jose and drew Seattle by playing their hearts out?
Or will it be the team that we just saw lose to Portland and not show up at home to Dallas? Oh, and I’m sure as a lot of Whitecaps fans will remember what happened in the Amway Canadian Championship final in Toronto.
For all of those who have counted out the Whitecaps and already and are already preparing for a San Jose-LA semifinal, there’s 90 minutes that need to be played and if there’s one thing I do know, DeMerit is going to make sure his team is more than ready to go.
Irfaan Gaffar is a Vancouver-based writer who works out of the Sporstnet Pacific Bureau. Follow Irfaan on Twitter.