Good Friday morning Caps fans, hope you all are having a good week and are gearing up for a break this weekend with no MLS action to occupy you.

The arrival of Vancouver’s biggest ever signing should be officially announced shortly (if it hasn’t already by the time you read this), meaning we will head into the weekend with a bang despite no on the field action forthcoming. Not even Discovery Rights could stop Thomas Mueller from signing with the Whitecaps and it marks a landmark moment for the club. We’ll have plenty more coverage of this going forward, including more analysis of how this will all look on the pitch when things are official.

Regardless of whether you feel Mueller’s signing was the best use of money (and, next season, a DP spot), this is still a surreal moment. We aren’t that far removed from DP signings that were, erm, a bit questionable. And you wouldn’t have been surprised if the ownership decided to see if Axel Schuster, Jesper Sorensen and the brain trust could Moneyball their way into a playoff run, given that a sale still is moving forward (albeit slowly). Pedro Vite’s sale seemed to confirm this was the way things were going to be.

Instead, they opted to show ambition for something a bit loftier. Ambition in MLS naturally doesn’t always mean success. Toronto FC is still digging out from years of misguided ambition, Atlanta hasn’t been able to find success despite dropping millions of dollars last offseason and Chicago only recently started to figure out a long term plan. Heck, the Lucas Cavallini transfer didn’t exactly go great and that was about as ambitious as the Caps have ever been.

But if you want a reason for why Mueller’s signing could go better than these cautionary tales it is this: additions like this generally go better when they are supplementing an existing core and when they are entering an environment that can develop players who can balance things out salary cap-wise. Vancouver under Sorensen have obviously shown they can do that. I said last time that Marco Reus is probably a best case scenario here and that’s basically what LA Galaxy did last year — add Reus into a team where he didn’t have to start or be the best player on the pitch but could thrive amid a generally strong side. And, sure enough, LA won a title.

Who knows if this will end the same way for Vancouver — they need a couple of other pieces for this transfer window to truly feel complete. But if Mueller can be like Stuart Armstrong-plus — a guy who pops up in the biggest moments and takes this team to the next level — that would be enough to give us some more special memories. So take it all in today folks and drink it in. For those of us who have suffered through, well, everything this team has thrown at us over the last decade and a half, it will be one to savor.

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