Good Monday morning Caps fans, hope you all had a good week and are ready for some warmer weather in the week to come.
It isn’t as warm, however, as Marbella, Spain, where the pre-season is off and running. The club confirmed the official roster as they prep for the year and it doesn’t have many surprises in there. All of the usual first team suspects you would expect are included, minus Brian White and Pedro Vite, who are away on international duty.
Meanwhile, basically every Whitecaps 2 player of note is included, giving the coaching staff a chance to see who might be able to contribute in cup competitions or become the next Simon Becher and answer the phone call for a stint in first team in MLS play.
The lone surprise was the inclusion of 24-year-old centerback Belal Halbouni as a trialist. Halbouni is not unfamiliar to the Caps brass, with the club weighing a loan move for him a couple of years ago.
Now, the Canadian-born Syrian national has been struggling for game time with 2. Bundesliga side FC Magdeburg and is getting a look as the Caps search for centerback depth.
Halbouni has not been getting a ton of looks recently, playing primarily for Magdeburg’s reserve side. He tore his ACL in 2022 (about the time the Caps were reportedly kicking the tires on a loan) on national team duty and has fallen from a fringe national team prospect to someone who is looking for greener pastures.
This has been a favorite type of player for the Caps over the years. Think back to Derek Cornelius, who was struggling in Europe and did well enough in Vancouver to get a return ticket to the continent, where he has continued to do pretty well. Doneil Henry also fits this category and while Karifa Yao was not a European reclamation project, he also was a low-risk depth pickup (that admittedly didn’t really work out).
I think everyone probably agrees that a more substantive centerback pickup would be needed but I’m fine with a roll of the dice on Halbouni in the same vein as Yao played last year, where he got a look during cup matches and then earned playing time (or not, as the case may be) based off those cameos. It won’t change the course of the Caps’ season but their past track record on these kind of trialists are generally pretty good.
Shameless Self Promotion
You can feel the season approaching when the content machine at TTS kicks into overdrive and we’ve arrived at that point. Caleb breaks down who the Caps should be looking for in the attacker market and also is skeptical of the Fafa Picault signing.
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I was trying to remember if the caps have made any significant moves during the offseason since Schuster’s been here… Last year there were 2, takaoka and Cordova… With takaoka, I think that the j league is also on roughly the same schedule as the MLS, and with Cordova he was kind of a desperation signing…
I just looked up and gauld was in July and Cubas was in April…
Also I could imagine that since the MLS isn’t as desirable a location as some of the European leagues that some players may want to wait to see if they could get something in Europe before agreeing to come here…
Anyway, what I’m saying is maybe Schuster has trouble doing larger signings in the winter window because of his connections… In the end I’d prefer that he wait and try and go for the right person rather than trying to do a desperation signing of just getting someone, like Cordova was last year… Would obviously prefer some big splashes, but it really seems like the summer transfer window is when he likes to do more of his work… Hopefully we’re still in good enough shape by the summer that we can add something then …
If we don’t start spending some money and quick, this season is going to be a total debacle. If this ownership isn’t going to invest, I wish they’d just move along.
I am glad they moved on from Karifa Yao. His game in the CanChamp qualifying showed that he was nowhere near MLS quality.
BOTH KREILACH AND FAFA are sketchy signings and i dont see how they will take the Caps to the next level, let alone stay where they are in MLS where upgrading is necessary to just stay in the conversation for the playoffs
last week, Axel said to expect 2 more signings- if Fafa is one of them, all we can see is 1 more addition- and Axel trying to dumb down to the supporters
at this point and with about 5-6 weeks until the MLS opens, i rate the Caps’ off-season as a D-