Good Friday morning Caps fans, hope you all are gearing up for a bit of a rest this weekend. It’s been brutally hot in our neck of the woods so that type of break is much appreciated.
Vancouver are set to launch their epic road journey across much of North America on Saturday night in Portland, a match that will be more significant for their opponents. The Timbers sacked manager Gio Savarese earlier this week after a 5-0 pounding at the hands of Houston Dynamo.
This always could go one of two ways. On one hand, Portland is five points adrift of the final playoff spot for a reason (with a game in hand). They’ve joint conceded the most goals in the Western Conference this season and have won only two league matches since they last played Vancouver in mid-May.
On the other hand, Portland isn’t that far off the pace and are possibly in line for a new manager bump. Assistant coach Miles Joseph will steer the ship for the remainder of the season and this game presents a situation that the Caps will confront in several of their upcoming matches.
Playing on the road is tough in MLS. But on paper, these are largely opponents that a playoff team should beat. That brings its own kind of pressure, particularly in a Cascadia derby against a team that is looking to get its season back on track. That’s a bit scary!
While Portland shows their manager the door, eyebrow raising news came from Ontario this week, where Toronto FC are trying to pin down which manager they want to bring in. And reports from The Athletic say they are engaging with John Herdman to depart the Canadian Men’s National Team and come over to the club side.
It doesn’t seem this has entered into any formal stage, possibly just a phone call that was quickly ended. But Herdman is starting to possibly wear out his welcome with the national team and an escape to possibly rehabilitate the country’s most high-profile soccer brand (as much as I threw up in my mouth typing that, it is true) would make a lot of sense.
Another candidate (assuming TFC could pry him away from DC United) is old friend Carl Robinson. No hard feelings with Robbo but I think I speak on behalf of every Caps fan when I say I am rooting so, so hard for that outcome.
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Our favorite podcast is back to break down the Caps’ MLS return, a little bit of Canadian Premier League action and more.
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over his tenures in MLS with Vancouver and his 2 teams in Australia, Robo has a winning percentage of 4.85- he talks a good line, but really for TFC to hire him would be a huge mistake for a team wanting to reignite itself – it would just be another example of TFC incompetence with MLSE management
1 bad memory of Robo was in a playoff home and home series vs Seattle- the first game was at BC Place with a packed lower bowl of 28 000– Carl’s strategy was to play for a 0-0 result and try to win in seattle– of course, we lost the series in seattle
name a coach who has that type of negative thinking !!