Reading too much into the results of any given week of a soccer season is an effort in futility. Especially in MLS, where results tend to have considerably more randomness than in bigger European leagues, you’re asking for trouble to declare anything final after watching two teams play for 90 minutes.
Whitecaps, we may have underestimated you
No team looked better in Week 1 than that constantly underachieving Whitecaps.
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Given all that, if there's one team the pundits -- yes, this includes SB Nation -- seem to have gotten all wrong, it's the Vancouver Whitecaps. Call it the hangover effect from a disappointing season. Call it the underestimation of rookie coach Carl Robinson, who seems to have been their third-choice man. Call it punishment for seemingly always achieving less than their talent suggests they should. Call it the over-valuing of Camilo Sanvezzo's loss. Call it simply, not paying enough attention. Whatever it was, the Whitecaps looked every bit like a team ready to take MLS by storm during their 4-1 trouncing of the New York Red bulls, the defending Supporters' Shield winners.
Of course, there's only so much you can read into this. The Red Bulls were, after all, missing Jamison Olave and Thierry Henry while Roy Miller, normally a starter, was forced to come off the bench after playing an international fixture earlier in the week.
But this was also a team that was mostly intact from a year ago. Nine of their starters were returning players and all them had played significant roles in bringing the Red Bulls’ their first-ever trophy. That team, it should also be said, never allowed more than three goals in a match. If not for Lloyd Sam’s 87th minute goal, the Red Bulls would have lost by four goals, something they hadn’t done in at least three seasons.
Point here being that even when the Red Bulls have been short-handed -- and they’ve been short-handed a lot over the past three years -- they’ve managed to remain pretty competitive and aren’t particularly prone to being blown out. But that’s just what the Whitecaps did.
What was remarkable is how easy the Whitecaps made it look. Although the Red Bulls mostly dominated possession, the Whitecaps were absolutely lethal on the counter-strike and never seemed to be in much trouble of losing control of the match.
Just check out their second goal, scored by Uruguayan import Sebastian Fernandez (no, not the World Cup veteran):
That was the kind of thing the Whitecaps just kinda did the Red Bulls. In fact, here’s another goal that is remarkably similar:
Yes, that's Kenny Miller. The same Kenny Miller who scored two goals over the final four months of last season and was almost cast off this winter. That chip is just kinda filthy, no?
Both of those goals have to have opposing coaches furiously scribbling notes. Both of them start deep in the Whitecaps’ end on seemingly innocuous turnovers near the penalty area. And yet, they end up in the back of the net in a matter of seconds.
On Fernandez's goal, in particular, the Whitecaps do a great job of using one-touch passing to create space for the next player. Darren Mattocks, much maligned after failing to live up to lofty expectations last year, does some quality work checking back to the ball and then sprinting into vacated space. Miller does a great job of recognizing exactly what Mattocks is trying to do and feeds him the ball in a position where he can work some one-on-one magic.
The third goal has some elements of this, too, even though it's not really a counter-strike. The Whitecaps get moving with a quick restart off a free kick in their own end. Fernandez then gets it forward to Kekuta Manneh on the left wing, again making sure he has plenty of space to roam. It's a little slower to develop, but Nigel Reo-Coker ends up with the decisive pass, finding Pedro Morales all alone near the top of the penalty area. The Chilean international finishes it, again with remarkable ease.
What’s scary about all of this is how recently the Whitecaps put this team together. Morales only joined the team about a week ago, which is why he didn’t start. Fernandez has been with them for most of training camp, but has never played at a particularly high level before this.
Combine those two with promising youngsters like Manneh and Mattocks and a seasoned veteran like Miller and this is suddenly looking like a very scary offense. Throw in immensely talented central midfielders Matias Laba and Reo-Coker and you've got what looks like the makings of a special team. Even on defense Steven Beitashour, Jordan Harvey, Johnny Leveron and Jay DeMerit make for a perfectly solid unit. There are no glaring holes, at least in the starting 11.
This might not be a championship team, but through one week they look as good as anyone else.
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