Good Friday morning Caps fans, hope you all are having a lovely week and that the weekend is starting to come into focus.

The Caps return this week, as a date with the worst team in the league, the New England Revolution, beckons. Given that the Revs won last Saturday during the weird international break matchweek, it certainly is possible for them to do some damage but this is one where all three points will be vital.

After initially being left off Jesse Marsh’s pre-Copa America list, Ali Ahmed got some excellent and well-deserved news on Thursday when he was called into the teams pre-tournament camp. That will mean he won’t make the trip to Boston for the MLS match this week and, assuming he gets the final call, could be absent for a healthy chunk of the summer.

This is a great result for Ahmed and, by extension the Caps — you want to show young players that they can use your club as a springboard to the international stage and Ahmed certainly merits inclusion on the Copa America roster.

But the possibility of the Caps losing one of their better players this summer only heightens the anxiety around the forthcoming transfer window. Sure, Ahmed has had a dip in form lately and has been less adept at taking guys on and beating them, one of his top qualities. But he is still a nailed on started and a dangerous player for a team that has not created much danger as of late.

The Caps were already up against it in the summer transfer window, with the stakes high. The team got lucky that many of their competitors (LAFC, Houston Dynamo and Minnesota United) didn’t do much over the winter. But that won’t happen again and some of the more aggressive teams on the transfer market (the LA Galaxies and Colorado Rapids of the world) have shown signs they will keep doing so in the summer.

We’ve discussed the needs here before so I won’t beat a dead horse. And, to some extent, this entire topic is a dead horse. But while we should all be rooting for Ali to make the national team, it will come with consequences for a team that is already struggling with depth and with maximizing its current squad.

Shameless Self Promotion

How has the season gone so far for the Whitecaps 2 side (who racked up another win against Minnesota United 2 on Thursday)? The intrepid Caleb Wilkins runs down the outlook on the youth team.

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