How should the Whitecaps build on their strong 2023 season? In past years it was pretty easy to spot glaringly obvious weaknesses or holes that needed to be plugged. The current squad doesn’t really have those. Yet, it is clear that improvements have to be made because the squad was still clearly a level below LAFC when they met in the playoffs. We now know that changes in the MLS roster rules for 2024 will be minimal, though there is an increase in the amount of allocation money available and the the DP threshold is now higher. So I think it’s time to start setting out some priorities for the offseason.

Roster Overview:

Considering how good 2023 was for them, the Whitecaps have a surprising amount of room to play with (though it’s not unlimited). At the moment, by my count, the Whitecaps have filled 16/20 senior roster spots and 5/10 reserve roster spots.

Due to the departure of players like Kam Habibullah and Matteo Campagna, there is quite a lot of room at the bottom of the roster. So if homegrown players with WFC2 get off to a strong start they have a good chance of getting a first-team contract. There’s also potentially some room for CPL or USL players willing to take the senior minimum.

On the senior side of things, a fair amount of money will be freed up. Russell Teibert’s 400k salary is gone and the Whitecaps are no longer retaining on Cristian Dájome or Cristian Gutierrez. This frees up approximately 1.5 million in cap space, though some of that will have gone to re-signing Sebastian Berhalter, plus the newest addition Damir Kreilach.

The Whitecaps currently have 11 international players signed. On paper, they have 9 international slots (the usual 8 plus the one Colorado gave them for a crazy long time back in 2011). However, Canadian teams are allowed to designate three players who have played for the club for at least a year as domestic. I don’t think this rule has ever been officially announced but the way the Canadian teams operate makes it obvious that reporting on it was accurate. So really the Whitecaps have 12 available slots, one of which is currently open. If they want to add more than one more international player they will either have to trade for another slot or move on one of their current internationals.

That brings us to the most exciting part of any roster build…

Designated Player(s):

At the moment the Whitecaps have two designated players in Ryan Gauld and Andres Cubas. However, there has been an increase in the DP threshold, which should make it possible to buy Cubas down with allocation money. If my interpretation of the rules is correct, this leaves the ‘Caps with a couple of options. If they add no additional U22 initiative players (currently they only have Pedro Vite on the roster) then they can have two senior DPs. Or if they wish to add more U22s then they can add one senior DP and one U-23 DP or a DP who is at or below the TAM threshold. Clear enough?

Based on where the Whitecaps are in their competitive window, I would say that two senior DPs make the most sense. As we have seen with Pedro Vite, U22 players can have a tremendous impact but it also can take some time for them to grow into their roles. You want to strike while Gauld and Cubas are at their peak and, given they will both be 28 next season, that’s right now! I don’t know if this is the approach the Whitecaps will take as, even with an increase in spending in recent years, they are still a budget-conscious team.

Positions to Target:

So with the roster capacity available to them, what positions should the Whitecaps be targeting? Let’s take a look at what is, as far as I can tell, the preferred 1st XI with the players under contract. I’ve put their G+/96 rating from American Soccer Analysis next to their names.

Now, obviously, we can view these numbers with a bit of a critical eye. If you were going purely off what the Computer says then the most obvious players to improve on would be Takaoka, Cubas, Vite, and Adekugbe. But, under the eye of human logic, each of these presents a problem. We’ve already discussed the difficulties of upgrading Takaoka in a previous article. Cubas is pretty obviously being underrated by the model. He’s mostly being dinged in the categories of “shooting” and “receiving” things that don’t really matter for his role in the team. Moving Vite back into a rotational role would feel a bit like clutching defeat from the jaws of victory after he has taken such tremendous strides over the past two seasons. To be sure, as the ‘Caps take the next step to contender status, that will involve some pretty good players being put in rotation roles. But Vite is a player you would hope continues to grow and be front and centre in the team’s success. Adekugbe, meanwhile, was only just brought in for a relatively high fee. Do the Whitecaps have the stones to push him into a rotation role so quickly after that? He is about to be 29 and has some struggles with injuries so that sort of role would make sense for him. But can the egos that brought him in handle that?

So, what can you actually do?

What Can You Actually Do?

I have thought about this a little bit and here are a few ways I think you could utilize an open DP slot. Obviously we don’t know Vancouver’s exact DP strategy at this stage but if multiple senior DPs are in the pipeline it would be possible to make some of these moves in tandem.

Option 1: Double Down

In 2023, to the surprise of everyone, Vancouver was a dynamic offensive team with a bit of a glass chin. While they were brushing shoulders with the league’s elite in terms of expected goals for, their expected goals against was middling. The team struggled with defensive set pieces to an almost comical degree. So, what’s the natural move to improve the team? That’s right, another major attacking piece!

Under this plan, the Whitecaps would be playing with a front three, either a 3-4-3 or a return to the Christmas tree, composed of Ryan Gauld, Brian White, and this as-yet-unnamed player. The profile I am imagining is somewhere between a striker and an attacking midfielder, essentially a really good version of Yordy Reyna. Somebody who adds a bit of pace and maybe some 1v1 ability to the attack. I think this sort of profile would compliment Gauld and White really well and escalate the ‘Caps’ attack to a state of near inevitability. Now, obviously, the biggest flaw with this plan is that it doesn’t address any of Vancouver’s biggest weaknesses, at least not with their biggest roster-building chip. But would that really matter if they score 70 goals?

Option 2: Re-Shuffle

For this option you keep the 3-1-4-2 shape and pop Ali Ahmed back out to the wing, the position at which he earned himself an MLS contract, thus creating an open spot in the centre of the park. You then fill that spot with a DP. The model player would be Seattle’s Joao Paulo, who elevated an already good Seattle Sounders team to CONCACAF Champions. I think it’s clear that Sartini doesn’t love the balance of Vite and Ahmed as the two #8s. I can understand why, although they are both dynamic and exciting they are also both small and give the ball away a lot. This way you can still play both of them and maybe get somebody sturdier and more ball secure in there.

Option 3: Gronk

Everybody is tired of conceding set-piece goals. It really did feel like it was possible to line up all of your big guys and just run Vancouver over last season. This has led to a desire amongst the fanbase for a centre-back who is such a Gronk that he negates all of that single-handedly. In general, I’d warn of the pitfalls of this idea. Replacing a genuinely good centre-back like Ranko Veslinovic with a super-tall guy might not reduce the overall number of chances against because he might have other weaknesses. But if you spent a lot of money on the position then you might be able to make a worthwhile upgrade. Using DP spots on defenders is often seen as a waste in MLS. But I think if you could find someone who was strong enough in the air to cause a major swing in set-piece goals for/against, offered more in possession than Veselinovic, and was still as good of a 1v1 defender as Veselinovic then I think it could be justified. Obviously finding somebody with this profile who doesn’t have a move lined up to one of Europe’s top 5 leagues would be a significant challenge. 

Anchors:

We should also talk about what players you might want to move on to clear up space for more additions. I see two players who are definite barriers to team improvement and one who could be one if he isn’t in Vanni Sartini’s plans. In a way, it’s kind of refreshing that these guys are simply inefficient rather than unplayably bad. A sign of the club’s improvements over the past couple of years. 

Alessandro Schopf:

Schopf has taken a lot of guff from Whitecaps fans during his time in Vancouver. I will say in his defence that he is far from the worst midfielder to ever suit up for the ‘Caps in MLS and I do understand why not every midfielder in your lineup can’t be an ultra-direct 23-year-old who weighs 140 pounds. But Schopf is a little too slow to move the ball and a little too slow getting around the pitch to justify his wage which is just under 1 million per year. I would urge readers to remember that wage and cap hit are not necessarily the same thing as transfer fees also count against a player’s cap hit. This is why players signed on free transfers tend to be getting paid quite a bit more. But still, you have to think you could get quite a bit more out of that cap space. Schuster and Co. did manage to move Cristian Dájome, a player in a similar situation last season so you would have to hope that he can pull something like that off again. 

Luis Martins:

Martins has a much more manageable cap hit at only 300k. But he’s an older international and, honestly, he’s probably the weakest outfield player Vancouver has under contract. His lower salary might make a buyout more palatable to the team, or it might make it easier to pay another team to take him. 

JC Ngando:

I do not want the Whitecaps to jettison JC Ngando. He doesn’t count against the cap, he was exceptional in MLS Next Pro and very solid in his few first team appearances last year. But he played less than 250 first-team minutes last year and he takes up an all-important international slot. What I would like to see is Ngando used as a regular rotation player. But if that’s not going to happen he should be going on a value-building loan with an eye towards a sale like Derek Cornelius and Caio Alexandre did. 

The Rest of the Squad:

What other positions might be targeted for additions? Well, Vancouver has just added Damir Kreilach and Ryoya Morshita is also a rumoured target. So we can deduce that attacking midfielder and wing-back are areas of interest. But to get a full view I think we should look at What Vancouver’s second XI looks like and see where the gaps are (this was assembled before Kreilach joined the squad).

Moving from back to front:

Isaac Boehmer did well enough in MLSNP and in his one first-team appearance that I would probably be comfortable with him as the backup. But you probably want to lighten the load on Takaoka and the coaching staff didn’t trust Boehmer with any games outside of the League’s cup last year. Is that going to change? If not, it would probably make sense to look for a reliable domestic backup (the second qualifier being much easier to come by than the first).

Brown and Laborda will be pushing each other hard for that outside-right centre-back spot but other than that there’s basically 0 centre-back cover. Either domestic depth or a starter who pushes somebody into a backup role should be a priority.

Obviously, at wing-back, there is nobody other than Adekugbe and Raposo (and perhaps Johsnon if that turns out to be his long-term position). I would quite like to see the ‘Caps take a look at the two Canadian Zachs (Brault-Guillard and Fernandez). But we can see from their interest in Morshita that they may look abroad as well.

In the centre of the park, Berhalter and Ngando are excellent backups. So is Schopf really but having him as a backup would be horribly inefficient. If they are able to jettison him that would open up a spot for a younger domestic backup (by god, is that Sean Young’s music!?).

Up front, you have Simon Becher who I think is a perfectly adequate domestic backup. You might want somebody with a bit more bulk as you’d really miss Brian White’s hold-up play if he were out for an extended period. But I think if you go into the season with White and Becher as your two #9s then you’re probably fine. Johnson is a fun utility player but he might end up as a wing-back and he wouldn’t provide the same stuff Ryan Gauld does if he had to fill in as a withdrawn striker. I think this explains adding Kreilach.

Which of these positions and who you might sign to fill them is highly contingent on the overall strategy of the ‘Caps including what they do with their DP spot(s) and any tactical adjustments they may make. So we might still need to wait for more dominos to fall to put together a coherent list of potential targets.