The Caps’ promising start to the year was dealt a blow on Sunday, as they were handed their first loss of the season by Real Salt Lake at BC Place. Despite going 1-0, RSL came back with a more dominant second half and punished a team that saw its shape fade fast without Andres Cubas in the lineup.
It wasn’t a totally lost performance at all, as a couple of guys stood out. Read on to get the skinny on who shined and who didn’t — and what it means moving forward this season.
Yohei Takaoka: 6.5
Hard to fault him on the first goal, positioning could have been a bit better on Katranis’ goal. Made a couple of big saves before that to keep the Caps’ from conceding more so I’ll call it all a wash.
Javain Brown: 6.5
Was a tidy match for Javain Brown, aside from being bailed out by the crossbar when he lost track of an inverted Fidel Barajas in the second half. His service and defensive quality was noticeably superior to Raposo’s
Mathias Laborda: 6.5
Laborda has had a solid start to the year and his ability to play a ball from out of the back is probably the best of the three starting centerbacks at this point.
Ranko Veselinovic: 6.5
Was excellent when the Caps were ceding possession heavily early at getting in the way of any attempt by RSL to create something meaningful, even shifting out to cover for an out-of-place Raposo at times. Started having trouble dealing with the RSL attacking band as the shape fell apart late and unfortunately was the one to play Anderson Julio on for RSL’s first goal.
Tristan Blackmon: 5.5
Was a bit like the Caps’ defensive shape writ large — looked solid early, began to drift further and further from that disciplined ideal as the match went along.
Ryan Raposo: 5
Not a great game from Raposo, with some misplaced crosses and getting caught out of position. Raposo winds up being the guy on a lot of counters simply due to his pace but he wasn’t tidy enough to be as dangerous as he can be.
Alessandro Schopf: 6
He’s no Andres Cubas but I thought Schopf was OK. I’d like to see him make more of an imprint on the match, however, as he often winds up being kind of anonymous, playing things safe and not progressing the ball.
Pedro Vite: 6.5
There are times when I watch Vite in his deeper lying playmaker role and it all fits together and I think ‘man, maybe this could work.’ And there are times when it just doesn’t and one of the weak spots of this role is also that Vite often can’t help out as an additional runner into the box, neutralizing one of his good attributes — pace.
Brian White: 7.5
Is clearly still feeling out his new role on the wing and at times was frustrated that he didn’t have much support in terms of runners to help his ideas come off. He’s actually pretty good, either more out wide or in a quasi-number 10 role, with Kreilach ahead and Gauld behind him. His assist was marvelous and his early exit is a bad sign for Vancouver, who looked lifeless without him in the match.
Damir Kreilach: 6.5
A frustrating start for the former Claret and Blue man dissolved quickly, as he put a 1v1 chance past Zac MacMath to notch his first league goal for the Caps. Unfortunately, he never really built on this and still looks like a passenger at times in this role. I don’t think he works particularly well as a target man in this system, at least as a starter.
Ryan Gauld: 7.5
Had an uncharacteristically loose pass early and quickly shook it off to notch a couple of key passes and ping a lovely ball to the feet of Brian White in the build up to the Kreilach goal. He kept things rolling from there and really seems to be embracing the deeper lying role he assumed.
Ali Ahmed: 7.5
Dude’s back must be sore from carrying the Caps’ attack in the second half. RSL simply didn’t know what to do with him and he should have drawn a second yellow card for Alexandros Katranis on one of his impressive runs. The rest of the team was just not able to keep up with Ahmed to turn his individual efforts into clear cut chances.
Luis Martins: 5
I’m still uncertain why Martins came on for Javain Brown.
Sebastian Berhalter: 5.5
Came on, had eight touches and didn’t do much. Probably should’ve been starting, in all honesty.
Levonte Johnson: N/A
I think the vision for Johnson is to be like Fafa Picault, but with more physicality and … you can see that vision having something to it. Feel like he needs to get a bit more engage but there is some promise there.
Bjorn Utvik: N/A
Played one really nice long ball in a brief cameo at the end that served as his debut.
After watching the 2nd half again here’s some thoughts: Brown was probably our most consistent player doing well on both sides of the ball. Overall the play was pretty even with both sides creating chances but we were guilty of more turnovers and unforced errors. Also the long up and over the top balls were getting picked off fairly easily. Our back three got exposed on the 1st goal. There wasn’t any pressure on the passer who had time to pick out a killer pass. Takaoka was exposed on the 2nd goal. At this level I don’t think a keeper should be getting beat by a chip/lob shot. Hopefully this isn’t a sign of things to come. Perhaps we’ll be one of the best road teams in the league but this style isn’t great for the home crowd. Besides some minor issues, a lack of goal scoring seems to be the big concern. And apologies to Mr. Balh. Martins did replace Brown. Unfortunately Raposo is not as good as Brown so that was a little of a letdown on the right side
No Cubas exposes the back three but also makes it easier for their back line to break lines with forward passes through our midfield. This site’s contibutors tend toward overrating the contributions of Vite and Raposo. Both were exposed on Saturday.
This team is uninspiring..theres just no fire or offensive excitement…you are not going to win anything in this league if you don’t spend some money and (nothing personally) but players like Raposo are bench players only not key starters if you want to get into the top category..its much of the same we’ve seen for the last few years..
from whitecapsinsider regarding the potential for Davies to be sold to Real Madrid this summer- i think it will happen, especially if Mpabbe is also going to RM
The reported sell on fee is 20%.
The Whitecaps would retain 95% of the fee. 5% goes to MLS. Whitecaps can designate up to $1,157,625 as GAM. The rest is distributed as cash.
A 50m Euro sale (last number I saw), the Whitecaps would net around $8.3M USD in cash. Certainly enough to bolster the roster with some transfer fees.
Unfortunately, the owners could also pocket the money (I.e not spend anything additional and just use the money to pay the existing wage bills)
what do you think the owners will do ?? make upgrades with a significant DP, or keep the money, or a combo of the 2 ?
Everyone, except White, should be pegged down a mark. Perhaps Raposo keeps his 5.0 or goes to a 4.5. The caps were outplayed in the 2nd half and there’s no way the team average at 6.5 is accurate. I’m going to watch the 2nd half again for a deeper dive into what went wrong. BTW, Martins replaced Raposo. At 1st look I thought Blackmon was at fault for losing his mark, who ended up scoring. Trying to play the offside doesn’t always work as demonstrated by Vancouver’s goal. Raposo is better on the right by far. He and Brown should alternate starts and time on the field 60/30. Our crossing wasn’t great. Brown was the best of the 3. He had a good cross to Gauld at the end of the 1st. McMath was able to catch a number of our crosses. i said it last week: play Ahmed up front
7/12 points to start the season is reasonable, especially when compared to the last 2 years… but only 1/6 point at home is NOT reasonable– i think the Team as a whole chokes and lacks energy and commitment to dictate the game- outside of Cubas and a healthy Ahmed (but cant count on him as a permanent starter), we are a weak MF team
and so we will dance around the playoff line