The Vancouver Whitecaps are back once again to take on Charlotte FC. Vancouver’s first foray into competitive football in 2024 was a bit of a false start as they were up against an in-season Tigres side, one of the best teams on the North American continent. Although it ended in defeat, the Tigres tie was a sort of moral victory, with Vancouver showing plenty of fight-back. But they don’t hang moral victory banners from the rafters, so hopefully, it’s time for those moral victories to give way to actual victories. 

Charlotte FC

Charlotte FC were not very good in 2023, finishing 9th in the league and not being particularly impressive either in terms of scoring goals or preventing them. But I noticed they battered NYCFC on xG in week one. My interest was piqued so I watched the game back to see if the turnaround was real. My distinct impression is that it is not. Charlotte had a penalty in the game and their goal was practically scored on the goal line after a goal-mouth scramble. They did not create high danger chances with regularity. 

Charlotte plays a 4-2-3-1 in possession that turns into a 4-4-2 out of it. I think Vancouver’s mid-block, which aims to clog up the middle of the field will be quite hard for Charlotte to bypass in that setup as their double pivot will be heavily outnumbered through the centre. Instead, I think Charlotte will have to look to play diagonal balls to their wingers Iuri Tavares and Kerwin Vargas. Tavares, a graduate of Charlotte’s MLS Next Pro team, is a really impressive athlete, standing 6’3 and possessing considerable pace. These traits are potentially problematic for Vancouver’s undersized and not particularly rapid centre-back corps. Vargas is more of an old-school winger; small, tricky, direct, and runs up and down the wing putting in crosses. 

All in all, though, Charlotte’s attack just doesn’t seem to have the juice to make serious noise in MLS. Their big-money #9, Enzo Copetti, scored the same number of goals as Simon Becher last season and has significantly worse underlying numbers. I also don’t see a lot of playmaking quality in the centre of the field. 

It does seem like Dean Smith has coached Charlotte into quite a disciplined defensive block. So the ability of players like Tristan Blackmon and Pedro Vite to break the lines will be very important in this match. 

Vancouver:

There is not a lot of mystery around how Vancouver is going to line up. It will be a 3-4-3. Takaoka will be in goal. The back three should be Blackmon, Veselinovic, and Laborda. (Editor’s Note: Laborda is actually suspended for this match after last season’s playoff against LAFC, so Sartini will have to look elsewhere, at least for this match.) Cubas and Vite will be in the centre of the midfield 4 with Raposo taking up one of the wing-back spots. The other wing-back spot is the only real question mark as Ali Ahmed is unlikely to be ready to go a full 90 minutes. Sebastian Berhalter, Luis Martins, and Javain Brown are all candidates to fill that role. I would put my money on Berhalter but wouldn’t be shocked to see any of them. The front three will be Gauld, Kreilach, and White. I’m not sure I love the front three with two big slow guys. But they managed to give Tigres some problems so I’m willing to withhold judgment. 

Ultimately I think the Whitecaps should win this game fairly handily. Charlotte is far from the worst team in MLS but they’re not particularly good either and Vancouver seems like a bad style match-up for them. The biggest thing I will be looking out for in this one is precision in transition moments. Vancouver had a lot of potentially good moments against Tigres but they couldn’t execute on those positions. If they can do that more consistently this could be a lot of fun.