Eighty Six Forever, Post Match, Vancouver Whitecaps FC

Post Match: Whitecaps still looking to level up after Leagues Cup defeat to Pumas

By Alexandre Gangue-Ruzic and Samuel Rowan

Wednesday night at BC Place, the Vancouver Whitecaps fell in the Round of 32 to Pumas UNAM by a final score of 2-0. As a result, that means that in the first two years of the competition, Vancouver has made it out of the group stage only to suffer a disappointing loss to a strong Liga MX side.

Vancouver fielded a strong lineup to start this match, including a midfield pivot of Pedro Vite and Andres Cubas, with Ali Ahmed and Seb Berhalter in wide roles and Levonte Johnson joining the front three. 

For much of the first half, the Whitecaps were the better side, controlling possession and threatening around the Pumas goal. Despite this, chances for Brian White and Levonte Johnson could not find the back of the goal for a couple of reasons – a combination of quality goalkeeping by Pumas keeper Julio González, as well as imperfect finishing by Vancouver’s strikers.

In the end, Vancouver’s inability to finish those early chances came back to haunt them. In the 37th minute, Bjørn Inge Utvik made things far too complicated trying to play out of the back with the ball at his feet. As a result, the visitors romped in on the break, with Mexican national teamer Cesar Huerta finishing the play by placing a shot past the outstretched arms of Yohei Takaoka.

Although Vancouver was down 1-0 after forty-five, the match still felt as though it was in the balance the way Vancouver had been playing. The Whitecaps had another good chance through Brian White in the 51st minute, but again, Pumas’ quality defending inside their own area was superior to Vancouver’s ability to be clinical in front of goal.

In the 57th minute, the theme of the match continued, as Vancouver’s miscommunication to track an overlapping run led to a second goal for Pumas. Once again, the Liga MX side showed their ruthlessness in critical moments, taking a multi-goal lead in a match which was very evenly contested up to that point. 

After going down by two, the Whitecaps continued to push for a goal, however, the visitors were pragmatic in their approach and handled the situation well, often playing eight or nine players behind the ball and closing down incredibly quickly whenever Vancouver looked to enter the opposition box.

Overall, the second half was far less eventful than the first for Vancouver, and although Vanni Sartini made several tactical changes and substitutions, none of them were able to break down a stout Pumas defensive structure, as the match ended 2-0 for the visitors. 

Here are three thoughts from inside BC Place after the Whitecaps’ round of 32 loss in Leagues Cup to Pumas UNAM:

Same old story for the Whitecaps against big Liga MX sides:

It’s become a familiar story for the Vancouver Whitecaps in matches against Liga MX opposition – they continue to put up a good fight, proving that they can hang with some of Concacaf’s best sides, but then when it comes to the key moments, they’ve often ended up on the wrong side of the scoreline. 

They saw that first-hand last year in the Leagues Cup, as they put in an excellent performance against Liga MX giants Tigres UANL in the Round of 32 but then fell short on penalties, and then they repeated that this year against Tigres in the Concacaf Champions Cup, where they fell 4-1 on aggregate despite putting in two good performances across both legs. 

Armed with what they learned from those experiences, however, it was hoped the Whitecaps could flip the script against a strong Pumas side. 

And early in the game, they looked like they might just do that, as they came out flying, looking like a side that wanted to prove a point. Doing well to control the tempo of the game, they were aggressive in possession, and started to knock on the door in terms of creating chances. 

Despite that, they were unable to convert their big chances, and that opened the door for Pumas to pounce. From there, they lost their grip on the game, as Pumas were able to dictate the terms of the match the rest of the way, and that left the Whitecaps to fight an uphill battle. 

Yet, this is a prime example of what teams like Pumas can do to you, and it’s a lesson that the Whitecaps have learned first-hand several times now. If you don’t take your chances, and you allow sloppy goals, you’re not going to win many games. 

Because of that, it’ll be hard for the Whitecaps to take solace in the fact that their overall play was quite strong in this game, as ultimately they came up short in two key areas of the game, and that’s in both boxes. 

Especially in terms of the first goal that they gave up, which was self-inflicted as it came from a sloppy turnover, and that’ll add to their frustration, as they’ll have known they couldn’t have afforded to make that sort of mistake against a team of Pumas’s quality, for many reasons. 

But once again, that remains the key hump the Whitecaps will need to get over as they now push to make a deep run in the MLS Cup playoffs – how they manage these games against big teams. As they’ve shown for a couple of years now, they can go toe-to-toe with tough opposition, and play great soccer while doing so, but they still require the maturity required to be ruthless and win those sorts of games regularly. 

Now, the big question remains of how to best fix that – will it be to continue to take the same lessons from losses like this and hope that they stick with this current group, or will they be tempted to bring in some players who can help them fix that? 

Given that the transfer window closes this week, the former seems to be the preferred option, so the Whitecaps will now have to hope that another loss like this will stick with them and allow them to take that next step that they’ve continued to flirt with taking as a team. – Alex

Ryan Gauld’s absence finally felt in quiet offensive performance: 

For the past three games, you could be excused if you said you hadn’t realized Ryan Gauld was out injured as he dealt with a knee problem. Given that the Whitecaps had scored eight goals in their last three competitive games after he went down against the Houston Dynamo last month, they’d done pretty well to score goals without him, to be fair. 

That was huge to see, as that’s been a big worry for this team over the past few years, as they’ve pretty much solely relied on the play of Gauld to drive their offence forward, barring a stretch last year where Julian Gressel played at a borderline MLS MVP level in 2023. 

Now, however, this Whitecaps team has started to show that it can rely on different contributors, such as Fafà Picault, Ryan Raposo, Sebastian Berhalter and more, who have stepped up nicely across these past few games. 

Because of that, while Gauld was missed, it felt like the Whitecaps could survive without having him on the field, allowing him to take his time in his rehab. 

And while that remains true despite this loss, in which the Whitecaps attack came crashing back down to earth, this loss did show where they miss him most. 

When they’re in a cagey match, one where it feels like a key moment at either end could decide proceedings, the Whitecaps have struggled to find goals unless Gauld gets involved. In more free-flowing matches, like the ones they recently played against the Houston Dynamo, LAFC and Club Tijuana, they’ve got several players who can step up and chip in, but when it came down to finding the magic required to break down Pumas, the Whitecaps struggled to generate the quality chances their overall play deserved. 

That’s where Gauld could’ve made a big difference, and why the Whitecaps will hope that this stretch of rest will allow him to come back even stronger when they resume their MLS season later this month. 

Not only that, but it also once again stresses the need for the Whitecaps to find a player who can also step up and take some of that load off Gauld in key moments, be it internally or externally. 

For example, two such players remain Ali Ahmed and Pedro Vite, who are key pieces on this team but have yet to hit their stride offensively as hoped, sitting with just two goals and one assist combined between them all season long. Yet, a big reason for that is their deployment, as Vite has often played deeper in the midfield, while Ahmed has seemingly been asked to play every position in the Whitecaps front seven, making it hard for either to settle into a role where they can help influence the attack more often. 

If the Whitecaps are going to be unable to bring in more support for Gauld via the transfer market, finding a way for one or both of those two to play more of a driving role in the attack could be a good bet to make, giving the Whitecaps another option to turn to in big matches. – Alex

What to make of Leagues Cup?

I think we can all agree that this is a pretty weird competition. 

With a three-team group stage, some teams being eliminated before others have started the competition, plus no matches in Mexico, there are a lot of things about Leagues Cup that make me wonder why MLS has chosen to do things the way they have, especially given the fact they started with a blank slate. 

A big one of these is how and why teams get to host elimination round matches. On the same night that Vancouver was beaten by Pumas, Pumas’s Leagues Cup group winners Austin FC were rewarded for their efforts against Pumas and Monterrey by playing away at LAFC, a match they lost 2-0. 

LAFC came second in their group, so why did they get to host group winners in Austin? Well, according to the Leagues Cup powers that be, last year’s MLS performance matters more than performance in this year’s group stage. If this is a true cup competition, then why should league performance matter for anything other than initial seeding?

It seems to me that Major League Soccer still can’t quite make up their mind as to what they want this competition to be. A true cup competition between Liga MX and MLS would be fantastic. Instead, this mid-season adventure feels more like a series of stilted brand activations, all under the guise of continental football competition.

I do think that Leagues Cup has a lot of potential for intrigue, but it still has a long way to go, at least in some markets. Many supporters groups, with Austin and Vancouver amongst them, have staged some sort of protest concerning the Leagues Cup and MLS’ continued disrespect for the US Open Cup. 

Equally, Vancouver posted the lowest attendance numbers I can remember at BC Place in this match against Pumas, in which tickets had to be sold on short notice due to a ridiculous turnaround in the competition’s schedule. The number was just under 10,000, which is jarring given how well Vancouver has been doing with their attendance so far this season, which is usually over 22,000 and second on average in the Western Conference. 

To me, those attendance struggles look more like a Leagues Cup problem than a Whitecaps problem. I’m sure Axel Schuster is taking note, and I wonder what the feedback will be like from executives around MLS this off-season.  – Sam

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

3 thoughts on “Post Match: Whitecaps still looking to level up after Leagues Cup defeat to Pumas”

  1. I think the scoreline says it all 2-0. 0 goals at home. They didn’t quite have the quality to finish off some good chances in the 1st 30 minutes and after that they didn’t create much in terms of quality chances. There’s lots of way ways to dissect this loss but scoring 0 goals at home has to be the big concern. So, the Caps are a mid level team. Sometimes they punch above their weight when the so-called supporting cast takes their game to the next level but it’s not a consistent happening, especially against top competition. Sidebar: we’re not very strong defensively either. We’re always at risk of losing games because of that, plain and simple. Note to the editors: be sure to be fair and give Utvik a 0.0 report card rating. That’s what was given to Brown and Nerwinski in the past for that type of blunder….

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  2. ALEX- “Now, the big question remains of how to best fix that – will it be to continue to take the same lessons from losses like this and hope that they stick with this current group, or will they be tempted to bring in some players who can help them fix that?”

    you already know the answer- its a rhetorical question- we might see 1 more move, but it wont be a shocker or have lasting help for the Team- Axel has to work within the confines of the MLS pots (the rumor of the Caps chasing Marcus Reus was just plain ridiculous- he made over $10 000 000 CD last year)

    major fixes only come from the Owners’ pockets and that aint happening

    actually i am happy the League Cup has ended for the Club- now the players can rest and get ready for the MLS playoff push which is more important to most supporters

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    1. Yeah, I had really hoped that we’d see something good happen during the summer transfer window, since they’ve made some bigger moves then during the last couple years… But it’s looking pretty unlikely now…

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