Having dispatched the Portland Timbers, the Vancouver Whitecaps move on to a best of three series against LAFC. This is not going to be easy. LAFC are a lot better than the Whitecaps on paper and will have home field advantage for two of the three games (should it get that far).

LAFC

So, the odds are long. But lets say you’re a person with the goal of influencing online communities to look more positively on Vancouver’s chances, some sort of “positive Whitecaps troll” or something like that; what arguments would you be making to convince people Vancouver has a chance? Well, you’d probably be pointing to the fact that LAFC’s underlying play did start to fall off a bit as the season went on. There were some signs of cracks towards the end, getting out xG’d by the shorthanded Whitecaps, barely out xGing the hapless San Jose Earthquakes, a 0.7-0.8 at home against Austin! Not super inspiring stuff. Of course, they also caved in SKC and St Louis during that time. But the American Soccer Analysis show offers us another source of copium. If you look at their G+ model, LAFC performs poorly in both boxes and in zone 14 (the area just outside the penalty area). The Whitecaps having all of Gauld, Armstrong, and White available could allow them to cause LAFC some problems.

LAFC plays a very defensive, counter-attacking style. They began the season playing a more expansive style but a 5-1 defeat at the hands of the Columbus Crew caused them to change things up. So if the Whitecaps can get an early goal, that might throw off LA’s game model quite a bit.

There’s a certain amount of clutching at straws going on here of course. I think the Whitecaps with a fit and firing Armstrong probably have a better chance at the upset than your median 8th seed team. But LAFC are still insanely good. Dennis Bounaga is still cracked, Eduard Atuesta is still an amazing ball progressor, Cristian Olivera is still a fantastic box arriver. Not to mention a half-dozen other guys who are extremely strong MLS Players. LAFC is probably going to win this series. But it’s less of a foregone conclusion than the gap in the standings between these teams would suggest.

Vancouver Whitecaps:

It’s weird to get to this point in the season and feel like we don’t really know what the team is. We know the pre-Armstrong Whitecaps were not good enough to make any noise. But if you were to ask me what a cup contender playing against a 9th place team on the road would look like then their 5-0 performance against the Timbers would be pretty close to what I would want to see. 5-0 probably flattered the Whitecaps a bit, almost all of their big chances went in, but they still dominated the game. At the same time, that’s only one game and the Timbers are clearly undergoing some internal strife. So what is the true level of the current Whitecaps team? I really have no idea. But everyone is available and they’re playing the best team in the West so I guess we’re about to find out! Of course, even a full three game series probably wouldn’t be enough to really be able to say for sure.

Against Portland Vancouver switched to a 4-3-2-1, though it was very much a 3-5-2 in possession. Sartini said this was because Portland liked to play diagonal balls in behind to their wingers. But I wouldn’t be shocked to a see a return to a 3-4-3 against LAFC. The Whitecaps have had success against LAFC with that formation in leagues cup and it was a 3-4-3 shape from Columbus that caused LAFC to blow up their whole game model and start anew.