The Vancouver Whitecaps have signed Damir Kreilach. At one point he was one of MLS’ best attacking midfielders. But he’s not that anymore and it isn’t reasonable to expect him to be. He’s almost 35 and he’s had some pretty nasty injuries. But what are reasonable expectations for him?

Firstly, we should talk about what Kreilach’s role on the team will be. I think it’s pretty obvious he will not be an everyday starter. But in the 5-sub era, I think older players who don’t have the juice to play 90 minutes anymore but are still strong technically are a lot more viable. I’d expect Kreilach to be deployed mostly late in games either to push for a late goal or to give the stars a bit of a rest if the team is up comfortably.

This leads us to the next obvious question: Is Kreilach the right guy to play that role? Looking at any kind of comparative stats for him is fraught because, although he lined up as a striker, he didn’t do a lot of striker stuff. But, there’s no nice way to put this, his stats last year were pretty bad. He was in the 8th percentile for xG+xA which, for an attacker who played over 1000 minutes, is pretty tragic. His total was almost entirely xG, so he’s not really a playmaker at this point in his career. He plays a lot of progressive passes and passes into the box relative to other strikers but not a lot overall. The only thing that stands out that he actually did well last season was winning headers. Truthfully, amongst MLS free agents I would have preferred Diego Rubio for the veteran super-sub role. Rubio is younger, more productive, and no doubt would have seen a significant boost moving from the worst team in the league to one that should be one of the best. But perhaps these same elements that make Rubio desirable also allow him to command a contract above the TAM threshold. We don’t know Kreilach’s exact salary and won’t until after the season starts. But the press release makes no reference to TAM so I would assume he’s on a relatively team-friendly deal. 

So what would actually be a successful outcome for Kreilach was a Whitecap? Well, I think the bar is actually not that high. I think 3-5 goal contributions would make this addition worth it. This would work out to 0.4-0.5 goal contributions per 90 minutes if he played an average of 20-30 minutes per game. Anything less than that and I think you have to ask yourself what the point of this was. But I think there is some reason to believe Kreilach could hit that total, even with his recent downturn. For one, Vancouver is a stronger offensive team than Real Salt Lake. Secondly, we know that Vanni Sartini has a fondness for box-arriving midfielders. So it’s possible Vancouver’s style of play, especially when they’re chasing a game, might suit Kreilach particularly well. Am I 100% convinced these factors will lift Kreilach to a late-career resurgence? No, to be honest. But it seems plausible to me. 

Overall, I think this signing gives the ‘Caps a small boost towards being the team I think they can be. It is obviously insufficient on its own and if Kreilach is starting a lot of games something has gone very wrong. But this is the sort of guy the Whitecaps could use and it seems they have gotten him on a reasonable contract (this may be proved false later).