Good Friday morning Caps fans, hope you all had an enjoyable week and are looking forward to some well-deserved time off.

Vancouver also will be getting some time off from its CONCACAF adventures, officially exiting the Champions Cup on Wednesday after an unflattering 3-0 loss to Tigres in Monterrey, despite a generally solid performance.

That isn’t to say that the Caps didn’t leave a good number of chances on the table at El Volcan, particularly in the first half, where they mostly went toe to toe with Tigres and had the better of the chances. Damir Kreilach straight up slipped before taking a golden chance, Mathias Laborda missed a free header — you get the idea. 

That left little doubt that Tigres would punish them for their inefficiency and, sure enough, the home side was going gangbusters in the second half, putting the tie away. 

It wasn’t as sharp of a performance as the Caps had at home but they can still hold their heads up high. Finishing will need to be sharpened before they take on Charlotte FC and a band aid solution at right back needs to be sorted out until Ali Ahmed returns from injury. But the good news? As our friend Caleb Wilkins pointed out on Twitter, Charlotte ain’t Tigres.

Most of the good things the Caps showed over two legs (a solid backline, a rejuvenated Yohei Takaoka, Andres Cubas being that dude) will translate well to MLS. 

Kreilach dipped on the road and I question the wisdom of playing a guy with his injury history for that many minutes. But Fafa Picault seems to be an excellent fit for this system, who feasted on a somewhat more open game and looked dangerous 1v1 and in space. I also look forward to seeing more of Levonte Johnson in the front three as well.

It doesn’t feel good to come up short against a big Liga MX team again and it would be cool if the team could get over that hurdle in Leagues Cup later this year. 

I’m pretty confident that, when that competition rolls around, this will all be but a faint memory and that version of the Whitecaps will be firing on all cylinders. But if the Caps want to be taken more seriously within the league and viewed as more than a dark horse, that is a mountain that would be good to climb.

Shameless Self Promotion

If you want more from Monterrey on Wednesday’s defeat, check out our humble post match report.

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