Match Preview: Sporting Kansas City vs Vancouver Whitecaps – the big push begins

I said in my Canadian Championship semi-final preview earlier this week that the Whitecaps currently boast an amount of depth that they’ve not had in other years, with the caveat that the defence was stretched a little thin due to injuries. Well, how about one more defender injured that we can add to the pile?

It’s a cruel bit of a fate that when the club has put together easily its best squad in the MLS era, it’s been accompanied by a seemingly incessant barrage of injuries to key players. The duo of Ranko Veselinović and Tristan Blackmon has been such a force at the back for the ‘Caps, but now the rest of the team will need to push for playoff seeding (and perhaps even the Supporters Shield) without either of them.

Joedrick Pupe and Sebastian Schonlau can’t get healthy fast enough, and the former is at least training fully this week. Will that be enough for him to be ready to go for Saturday? Maybe, but maybe not. If he’s not ready, then the only options in the middle of the defence are (on paper) fifth-CB Belal Halbouni, normally a fullback Mathias Laborda, and recently promoted from WFC2 Mark O’Neill.

In fact, if Pupe isn’t in the lineup and Laborda draws the start alongside Halbouni, Édier Ocampo, and Tate Johnson, then the only defenders of any kind on the bench would be O’Neill and Giuseppe Bovalina. Given that the ‘Caps are about to play three matches in eight days, two of them against their Cascadia rivals, that “next man up” mentality will need to carry the torch.

Thankfully, Andrés Cubas is at least available to support the backline, and he and Sebastian Berhalter seem to be finding their groove as members of the “2” in the newly set 4-2-3-1 formation. An aggregate scoreline of 11-0 in the last two games would help point to that, at least.

They will have to do it though without last weekend’s hat-trick hero Thomas Müller, who won’t travel to KC a precautionary measure with an adductor strain with two big Cascadia clashes looming. J.C. Ngando got the start against Forge, and thrived, so expect to see him continue in that number 10 role.

With Pupe, Brian White, and even Ryan Gauld all trying to work their way into the fold soon for this final month of the regular season, this Saturday’s clash with SKC is a “survive and advance” type of outing. It doesn’t need to be pretty or flashy like the Philadelphia drubbing. Just get in, do what needs to be done, and please don’t leave with any more injuries.

While the task is certainly made tougher by being on the road, the American side do have just four wins on their home turf this season. They’ve also lost six of their last seven, a stretch of play that began back near the end of July when the ‘Caps took them down 3-0 at BC Place.

Vancouver will certainly have to be wary of Dejan Joveljić, who very impressively (considering the level of the team around him) is tied for fourth in the MLS Golden Boot race with 17 goals. Given that the rest of the team has 24 goals combined, it’s clear who the top name on the scouting report is.

For the ‘Caps, the lineup close to picks itself at this point, given the spots that are locks or close to it due to either injuries to other players (the backline, Daniel Rios), or unquestioned stars of the team (Cubas, Berhalter, and usually Müller). That’s not even mentioning Yohei Takaoka and his league-leading 12 shutouts, just one behind the club’s MLS era record of 13 set by David Ousted in both 2014 and 2015.

The two winger spots are where the truly fierce competition is, with Ali Ahmed, Emmanuel Sabbi, and Jayden Nelson all worthy of starts given their play. There’s also Kenji Cabrera awaiting his opportunity to truly get a proper run, and perhaps a little unfortunate to not get that yet, but it’s hard to want to shake things up in the attack too much after the last couple performances.

They might need to lean on that attack a bit more now than before as well given the potential shakiness of the back without both of their rocks available. But the Whitecaps have shown plenty of resilience plenty of times this year, this being another chance to do just that.