Good Monday morning Caps fans, hope you all are having a lovely start to your week and that it isn’t as cold in your neck of the woods as it is here.
Sunny Spain looks pretty good from where I’m sitting, as the Whitecaps get underway with their pre-season preparations under Jesper Sorensen and Co. The first friendly of the Spain trip is on Friday.
Don’t expect any new signings in before then, however, as Mexican media reports indicate Mazatlan have signed Anderson Duarte immediately after I hailed his quality on the Friday blog post. Glad I have lots of readers in Mazatlan (sarcasm intended).
This signals one of two things. Either a) the reported interest from Vancouver was a desperate attempt by Toluca to induce a bidding war or b) the Caps are being spendthrifts.
I get that spending will probably be constrained while the sale process is underway. And I don’t have an intricate enough understanding of the Duarte situation to fully say the Caps were the ones at fault here, though I fear this was a case of not wanting to go the extra mile to bring in a talented young player.
Sometimes you lose in the transfer market. But this doesn’t seem to be a team that is especially well oriented to notching wins at the moment when it comes to bringing in players that can improve the squad. Sure, this isn’t a team that is going to break transfer records or anything. But the U-22 slots are a rare place where you can make a difference and can show some ambition. Duarte would have done that and you better hope there is a quality Plan B waiting in the wings.
The Caps keeping their core group together (fingers crossed) would put them ahead of other Western Conference rivals. Houston lost Hector Herrera and Coco Carrasquilla, Real Salt Lake dealt Chicho Arango and Portland might be moving on from Evander. Some junk tier rumors about Burnley signing Stuart Armstrong don’t seem so bad. But reinforcements are still badly needed to move ahead of those clubs, many of whom have been better in the transfer market in recent years. Let’s hope we start to see some movement.
Best of the Rest
Alphonso Davies is set to stay at Bayern and turn down Real Madrid amid a season of much better form under Vincent Kompany.
False alarm on those Neymar rumors — sounds like he’s headed to Brazil instead of MLS.
Quinn is returning from NWSL as the Vancouver Rise’s first marquee signing.
A Camillo-like transfer saga in CPL between Forge FC and Beni Badibanga
Regarding Duarte was he transferred to Mazatlan or just also on loan? If he was transferred any word on the price?
written by Salty
so in the end, we should keep our hopes tamped down- as usual with this Club, its all about $$$$$$$$- trying to get champagne on a beer budget- injuries and fatique will again play a if 2024 is used a road map for Axel Schuster signing significant pre-season, in-season upgrades, we can see that he signed Damir Kreilach (over the hill and his playing time and game impact were minimal, Ralph Priso and Bovalina (not as good as a solid utility player as Ryan Raposo was and now is going to places unknown), got lucky with Fafa Picault (who put in very good 2/3 season, but faltered for the last 1/3 where we really would have benefitted), Edler Ocampo (unproven but might prove to be a good signing)
and we have still to see what Stuart Armstrong might add (and it could be significant, but it wouldnt surprise me if he took the Burnley offer as the Club is in the running for promotion to the Premier league which might be very attractive to him, at least until May and then return to the Caps)
the only positive from all of this negative lead-up to the season is that young academy players will be given serious opportunities for game experience – the new coach was partly hired for this reason- the academy players should be on the same footing as Priso and Bovalina when it comes to sub time
starting the season with some positive results for the first 2 months will also be a definer for where we end up come Octoberrole for our playoff chances and being a serious contender, which with the existing line-up and lack of solid depth will once again probably FALTER (which i predicted last january-february- without 2 significant signings and at this point, we have NONE which makes you wonder what Axel and the scouting staff have been doing since the 2024 season ended, albeit finding a new coach did take a lot of time)
its a non-impressive start for 2025