Eighty Six Forever, Post Match, Vancouver Whitecaps FC

Whitecaps advance in Canadian Championship despite “shameful” 2nd leg loss to Cavalry

By Samuel Rowan and Alexandre Gangue-Ruzic. 

Tuesday night at BC Place, the Vancouver Whitecaps lost 1-0 to Cavalry FC in the second leg of their Canadian Championship quarter-final matchup, but advanced 2-2 on away goals to move on to the next round of the competition.

It was an incredibly frustrating night at home for Vancouver, who looked out of sorts throughout the match, and as Vanni Sartini described in detail post-match, his team lacked the attention to detail and desire necessary to control proceedings and advance comfortably.

Though the Whitecaps were not great through the opening 30 minutes, there were at least some positive moments from the young front three of Levonte Johnson, Cyprian Kachwele, and Giuseppe Bovalina. Kachwele had a couple of good looks inside the box, and Marco Carducci only just managed to get his fingertips on a dangerous effort from the Tanzanian, as the shot rolled just wide of the far post.

Unfortunately, it was downhill from there for Vancouver. In the 32nd minute, the Whitecaps left space open at the back, and William Akio was able to fire a cross into the Vancouver area. The cross found the feet of Ranko Veselinovic inside the box, and the Serbian got his feet all wrong, stabbing at the ball and deflecting it past Isaac Boehmer into the Vancouver goal.

The own goal gave Cavalry the life they were looking for in the match, and at the same time, it seemed to zap the Whitecaps of any confidence they had, especially the young players who were trying to make their case for more minutes as the season goes on.

Down 1-0 after the first half, the Whitecaps brought on Ryan Gauld and Brian White in an effort to see things out in the second, but it did not make the desired impact, as Vancouver’s efforts became increasingly casual, even in the face of Cavalry pushing for an all important second goal. Ultimately the Whitecaps survived, but there wasn’t much joy in the faces of Vancouver’s players at full time.

For a Whitecaps side that has been struggling lately in league play, this would have been a huge opportunity to build some confidence in advance of a big match this weekend. Instead, this midweek cup tie will have left the Whitecaps short on confidence and in search of answers, as they try to re-discover the defensive consistency and fluid attacking play they were able to have success with early in the season.

Now, despite this match being nothing short of a disaster for Vancouver, I also think we have to be realistic about the way things played out.

Vancouver did out xG Cavalry 0.97 to 0.54, and if Ranko Veselinovic’s own goal deflection had gone harmlessly wide of target and the match had ended 0-0, one would probably feel much differently about this match. While such a performance would not have addressed any of the bigger picture concerns with the team right now, at least it wouldn’t have poured additional fuel on the fire. I think this tweet sums up the glass half full side of the picture pretty well:

In the end, Vancouver is on to the next round of the Canadian Championship and there’s still a lot of things to like about this team. This is a tough stretch of the schedule, and if they can come out the other side of it with a decent position in the league, while advancing in the cup, then it’s hard to be too mad about that. At the same time, man, they need to play much better football than this over the course of the summer if they want to reach their lofty ambitions to be a top MLS side.

It should be interesting Saturday when the Whitecaps host Inter Miami at BC Place.

Here are three thoughts from this one, as we saw it from inside BC Place.

Did the Whitecaps take the wrong approach?

Naturally, the biggest challenge with cup matches isn’t always with what’s in front of you, but what’s lurking in the distance. Especially in the case of the Whitecaps, who have one of their biggest games in club history awaiting them on the weekend when they host MLS leaders Inter Miami, it was always going to be hard for them to keep focus on this Cavalry match. 

The Whitecaps were drawn into that reality, and their lineup for this game reflected that, as they left out some heavy hitters with an eye on the weekend, with Ryan Gauld and Brian White starting the game on the bench, while Fafà Picault and Andrés Cubas didn’t even dress. Given that they’re all figures whom one would expect to play a big role in that Miami game, that wasn’t all that surprising to see, to be fair. 

Yet, in a sense, it perhaps reflected that the Whitecaps were underestimating Cavalry, as they put out quite the front three, as Levonte Johnson, Cyprian Kachwele and Giuseppe Bovalina led the line for the ‘Caps in this game. 

Other than that, the rotation wasn’t too unsurprising, as the Whitecaps still played some key regulars in Ali Ahmed, Pedro Vite, Ranko Veselinovic, Mathiás Laborda and Bjørn Inge Utvik, but to leave out all three of their main offensive difference-makers in Gauld, White and Picault was a bit surprising, as this game was essentially going to be decided by whoever scored first, which was a lot to ask of a front three where Johnson was the only one to have scored for the Whitecaps in his career. 

Either way, Cavalry were going to need at least two goals to have a hope of advancing, so they were always going to want to play aggressively. That’s perhaps why the Whitecaps went with a pretty strong back three to prepare for that. 

At the same time, the Whitecaps could’ve put the pressure on Cavalry by scoring first, which would’ve at least guaranteed them that two Cavalry goals would only send them to penalty kicks (not scoring meant that two Cavalry goals would knock them out), while two Whitecaps goals would’ve essentially ended the tie. 

Plus, with the Whitecaps slumping right now, sitting winless in five straight MLS games (0W-3D-2L), having scored just three open-play goals in their last six in all competitions (one against the New York Red Bulls, two against Cavalry in leg one), this could’ve been a confidence-building match for the Whitecaps regulars, too. 

Instead, their current struggles ended up being amplified, as they failed to score, and an early defensive mistake put Cavalry within one goal of advancing for 60 minutes of this game, putting it on a knife edge. 

The good news out of all of this for the Whitecaps? They survived the match. It wasn’t pretty, and required a massive Isaac Boehmer save late to get it over the line, but they got through. 

In the end, that’s all that matters. When the Whitecaps won the 2022 Canadian Championship, no one remembered that they only beat Cavalry on penalties in the quarter-finals, or narrowly got past York United in the semi-finals – it’s just about getting the job done and moving on. That’s the beauty of cup football.  

At the same time, they gave a lifeline to a Cavalry side that never needs an invitation to believe in themselves and have a go, suffered a loss in the game because of that, and nearly were eliminated from one of their most important competitions in the process. 

Amid one of their biggest slumps in recent years, that would’ve been catastrophic, yet the near-miss started with the Whitecaps conservative approach to begin the game. – Alex

Whitecaps slump rears its head in defeat:

Fittingly, the main contributing factors from this slump manifested themselves in this game – the Whitecaps can’t seem to buy a goal right now, and they’ve been prone to making some strange defensive errors. 

Naturally, both are of concern for this team – at their best, they’re going to have to be very tidy in their defensive structure, which will allow them to spring forward and hit teams at the other end, be it in transition or in possession. 

As a result, when asked after the game about his biggest worry with the team right now, Vanni Sartini noted that he wants his team to return to their defensive structure, which he feels they’ve lost a bit. They haven’t been bad over this slump – in fact, other than a one-game blip against LAFC, they’ve actually been quite good defensively, but they’ve been let down by some big individual errors at untimely moments. 

This game was another example of that. The goal they gave up wasn’t egregious, as it was an unlucky own goal from Ranko Veselinovic that caught Boehmer off-guard, but the whole sequence was far too lackadaisical for the Whitecaps, who didn’t create their own luck with how they were sitting on the back foot on the run-up to that tally. 

Unfortunately, the Whitecaps are making too many of those mistakes right now, which is contributing to their struggles offensively. When you give up preventable goals at one end, it puts pressure on the attack to make up for those mistakes, and for a Whitecaps team already struggling to score, that added pressure can feel like having a heavy weight on one’s shoulders. 

So naturally, while it’s clear that the Whitecaps need to find some more juice offensively if they’re to bust out of this slump, just returning to the basics and finding some structure could be a way to find their confidence back. 

They’ve seemed to lose their way over this slump, and while some of their losses could be attributed to bad luck and playing on the road in MLS (which is never easy!), this defeat was the first real sign of how far the Whitecaps confidence levels have sunk, and what they need to do to get out of this slump. -Alex

Whitecaps hit low point under Sartini, will look to rebound vs Miami:

Sartini didn’t hold back when describing this match, noting afterwards that he thought his side were “shameful”, and that they owed an apology to the fans. Then, not done there, he said that Cavalry deserved better and that he’ll struggle to pick a lineup against Miami because everyone was bad in this game. 

He also took a lot of accountability on how the game went after the game, noting that he has a long look in the mirror with how this game went for his team, saying that this feels like a low point in terms of his time as head coach. 

All-in-all, it was a raw and brutally honest 18-minute account from the Whitecaps head coach, who didn’t pull any punches when it came to his team’s performance.

And he didn’t say anything that was untrue or out of order, as the biggest worry from this loss wasn’t that the Whitecaps lost, but how they lost. Against a good Cavalry team that has experience with playing MLS sides, it was never going to be an easy tie for Vancouver. 

Despite that, the Whitecaps had no excuse to get outworked, which ended up being the case in this game. In a match where they could’ve stamped out their influence, they sleepwalked and were nearly a moment away from watching their Canadian Championship threepeat go up in flames.

But in a sense, this might be what they needed. Among their games in this slump, the only true dark spot was the LAFC away game, and even that isn’t so bad in isolation – despite that loss, they’re on a pace in MLS road play that would’ve put them top five in the league in 2024. 

In this game, however, they were outworked at home by a team with a fraction of their budget, and that’s a big worry. 

Now, however, they’ve got the perfect game to help turn their ship around. Against Inter Miami, many will expect Miami to run away with the game after seeing this Whitecaps performance, especially if Lionel Messi plays as he is currently expected to. 

Yet, as seen in the past, when the Whitecaps stick to their game plan and rely on that key cornerstone of their identity, which is hard work, they can compete with the top sides. This Miami game will be no different. 

So if they can use this Cavalry game as a reminder that they must stay true to that identity, they could use the Miami game as a catalyst to return back to where they were a month ago, where they were one of the top sides in MLS to start 2024. 

Certainly, the potential is in this group to become that team on a more regular basis, as they showed in flashes, but they’ll need to put this slump away, fast. 

No better way to do that against Miami than by using this Cavalry game as fuel to not suffer similar embarrassment in front of a record crowd, instead putting together a performance that can once again show what this team can be at its best, one that can believe in achieving big things in 2024. 

Luckily, after this game, they can still achieve all of those big games, but a bounce-back against Miami will be a must to ensure the confidence in their ability to do that doesn’t sink too low, instead of falling into the same habits that sunk them in this Cavalry match. -Alex

This post was done in collaboration with Canadian Soccer Daily, who cover all things Canadian Soccer at https://canadiansoccerdaily.com

5 thoughts on “Whitecaps advance in Canadian Championship despite “shameful” 2nd leg loss to Cavalry”

  1. I think this fails to acknowledge that, quite frankly, other teams have figured out how to beat the Whitecaps and it’s frighteningly easy. Play deep and let the Whitecaps make their own mistakes. They’re not capable of breaking other teams down, and they can’t help but make their own mistakes. And 3 at the back leaves them so vulnerable that when they make a mistake it’s costly.

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    1. When other teams bunker you need someone with a bunker buster type shot from distance. We only have Schöpf that I’ve seen with that ability. Just pummel the wall of defenders with hard shots with the other attackers going for rebounds.

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      1. I agree. Berhalter has come close as well. I’ve seen Cubas let fly a few times but he’s usually too far back and doesn’t get involved in the direct attack in and around the penalty area. Vite is always trying to hit the curler to the top corner but misses all the time. He did recently hit one where he put his laces thru the ball and forced the keeper into a tough save where there was that rebound you talked about….

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  2. thinking that the present Caps is a MLS Cup contender is way overly optomistic IMO- its obvious- or it should be- that the low MLS quality in MF is our problem and it places far too much pressure on Gauld and White to produce the attack every game

    the Caps played over-their-heads in the early season on the road and played under-their-heads at home which is still a BIG concern (clicking at under 40% in points)

    my major issue is that they come slow out of the blocks- i dont know whether its laziness or just nervousness, especially at home – now the road games have become a problem also (just 1/9 points in 3 away games) – Miami on Saturday is a puzzle of what we will see for the first 25 minutes- they should come out blazing, but we havent seen that this year at home

    the only creative spark last night came from Vite, a bewildering player- he made some special passes that were delightful and was the POTM; and i thought our Goalie, Isaac Boehmer was reliable – i dont think he is a long away from being a serious contender for #1 (and he is taller and looks better at controlling crosses inside the box)

    all it will take is 1 magical player to make this team go from joe average to a good team that can do upsets in the playoffs- its the MLS, afterall- confidence and belief are easy words to say, but difficult to reach

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