Decision Day for the 2022 MLS season has come and gone, and the field has been officially reduced to 14 teams moving onto the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs. Perhaps sooner than some expected, the final few teams to miss the playoffs have been confirmed and it’s all focus ahead on the offseason.
Here, we'll be covering three questions for every team moving forward. Think of it as an exit interview, if you will. Matt Doyle, as always, has you covered on his preeminent season-in-review for each club (Vancouver version). Read that, too.
He has gifs. It’s tough to beat gifs.
Vancouver Whitecaps FC were unable to build on their strong league form under Vanni Sartini from 2021 and have fallen short of the playoffs, though the season came with a trophy as they did win the 2022 Canadian Championship.
With the CanChamp in hand, the Whitecaps have qualified for the 2023 Concacaf Champions League. Before we get there, and trying to return to the playoffs for only the second time since 2017, there are a few questions that need answering.
Scroll down and look at the depth chart (or just trust me): The Whitecaps have a really strong starting XI. The issue is they never played together.
Deiber Caicedo picked up a season-ending knee injury. Andres Cubas, Julian Gressel and Alessandro Schopf were acquired midseason. Canadian teams had more restrictive COVID testing/measures, so there were some further availability issues in addition to injuries. And don’t forget some, erm, weird lineup decisions along the way.
Only Ranko Veselinovic started 30+ games this year. Ryan Gauld only had 25 starts, while Tristan Blackmon had 23 and Brian White had 19. For comparison, FC Dallas had seven players of their first-choice starting XI with 25+ starts. Vancouver had two.
There won’t be a ton of change to the playing squad, a result of the front office being methodical and deliberate about their signings and the team looking good in theory, even if we haven’t seen it in practice. They waited a while to get Gauld and Cubas on Designated Player deals. Both imports are really good.
Sartini just ended his first full season in charge. The magic from his interim run last year, where he led Vancouver to the playoffs, has dissipated over the course of a disappointing 2022. There will be talks about the club’s direction.
Vancouver seemed poised to continue improving and building amid an extremely fun end to 2021 and a core pieced together over the course of numerous transfer windows. Sartini and his staff had a full offseason to work with a group that they immediately improved on the fly at the end of last season.
It went in the opposite direction. The Whitecaps won just one of their first eight games (1W-6L-1D) and it proved too big a hole to get out of.
Injuries/players being unavailable are a big explainer of the failed improvement, also perhaps explaining some of the odd lineup choices, but not all of it. There was a lot of tinkering, both with the formation (like starting the season by inverting the midfield triangle and making it a 3-1-4-2) and personnel (Gauld played as a No. 8 at times, Gressel was flipped to LWB in-game depending on matchups, Cristian Gutierrez spent time in the back three and more). The end result was rarely as desired.
Some of the most successful coaches in MLS history (Brian Schmetzer and Bruce Arena, to name a couple) have a knack for putting their best players in their best positions and not overcomplicating the game. Maybe we’ll get a bit more of that in 2023.
Sartini did lead the club on an end-of-season run that improbably had them within playoff contention on Decision Day, needing to beat Minnesota United FC to get in. They had a lot of continuity in the starting XI, both in terms of formation and personnel.
The Whitecaps have a club option on Lucas Cavallini’s contract. While he experienced a bit of a renaissance during the year when White was out… it still wasn’t up to the hype when the Canadian international No. 9 signed for a club-record fee ahead of 2020. Those bad vibes were compounded by a flashpoint red card against Nashville, which suspended him for four games – the entire month of September.
I’d assume that option isn’t likely to be picked up. If it’s not, the Whitecaps will have a third DP spot open next to Gauld and Cubas. Given Cubas is just below the max-TAM threshold, they can sign another senior DP and still have all three U22 Initiative slots.
Okay, enough sicko-meme roster rule minutiae. Where will they focus the search for the last DP spot?
The Whitecaps are using DP spots at No. 10 and defensive mid. They spent significant resources on RWB (Gressel), CM (Schopf) and center forward (White). U22 Initiative slots (Caicedo, Pedro Vite) are tied to attacking spots as well.
Teams rarely use DP spots in defense (or wingback), so while Vancouver could go in a few directions, replacing the DP spot with another center forward would make sense. Particularly a more mobile player with different strengths than White so the pair could play together with Gauld underneath.
Perhaps this isn’t addressed in the winter if it even is open; maybe they wait until the summer, as they did with Gauld and Cubas. We’ll see.
A couple more thoughts:
- What will 2023 have in store for talented 20-year-old Ecuadorian Pedro Vite? He has 2g/2a in just under 1,200 minutes this year.
- More and consistent reps for a midfield trio of Cubas, Schopf and Gauld will be welcomed next year.
- What will happen at LWB? Will Luis Martins be back?
