Report and Reaction: White puts St Louis to the sword again as ‘Caps extend unbeaten run to four

Report and Reaction: White puts St Louis to the sword again as ‘Caps extend unbeaten run to four

Posted on July 13, 2024 by in MLS, VANCOUVER WHITECAPS with 0 Comments

Vancouver Whitecaps wrapped up a grueling spell on the road with a comprehensive 4-1 victory at St Louis City on a hot and humid Saturday evening in Missouri.

Brian White continued his goalscoring streak on league duty, firing the ‘Caps ahead just nine minutes in. It was White’s 6th goal in his last four MLS matches and it set Vancouver on the way to a well-deserved, if at times hard-fought, victory. They had to work for it though and poor defending had let Nokkvi Thorisson restore parity in the 27th minute before White made it seven in four games just before half time.

Ryan Raposo and Fafa Picault added to Vancouver’s tally in the second half, making it five wins in their last eight MLS matches and extending their unbeaten league run to four games and sees them exceed last year’s points total on the road with five matches still remaining.

Vanni Sartini went with a strong line-up, making four changes to the team that won the first leg of their Canadian Championship semi-final at Pacific FC on Wednesday evening, and lining up in a 3-4-3 formation.

With the Whitecaps running out winners in a seven-goal thriller between the two teams at BC Place just two weeks ago, this was always going to be an interesting rematch. The ‘Caps were handed a couple of goals in that game by the visitors. They wouldn’t have been expecting the same favours to be handed out in Missouri, but yet, they were!

White fired Vancouver ahead in the 9th minute after Njabulo Blom inexplicably played the ball back to Gauld. The Scot ran in on goal and played a neat pass inside to White, who made no mistake in firing past Roman Burki from just inside the box.

The Whitecaps were in complete control but the home side got themselves back level against the run of play in the 27th minute.

A long free kick went over the head of everybody and fell to Thorisson at the back of the ‘Caps box. The Icelandic forward’s first effort was blocked but he hit his second attempt through a crowd of Whitecaps players and through the legs of Yohei Takaoka.

It was a poor goal to lose from a Vancouver perspective and the teams were back level, bringing the home crowd back into the game.

Sebastian Berhalter came close to putting Vancouver back ahead, firing wide of the right post after a wonderful one-touch passing move to set things up. St Louis responded with Takaoka making a save to deny the home side.

The Whitecaps retook the lead a minute before half time and once again it was White that did the damage.

Mathias Laborda sent a beautiful ball in from the right which was met brilliantly by Picault. Burki denied the Haitian’s header, but the rebound came to White, who blasted home from close range and the ‘Caps went into the half with the lead.

St Louis came out fired up for the second half, taking the game to Vancouver.

Indiana Vassilev fired wide in the 51st minute, with the home side having another couple of half chances before Ranko Veselinovic cleared Eduard Löwen’s shot off the line on the hour mark.

The Whitecaps withstood the pressure and increased their lead in the 63rd minute.

St Louis were unable to clear the ball from their box, with Vancouver unable to get any clear shots off on goal amidst a scramble. The ball eventually fell to Raposo and he fired home from 10 yards out and the ‘Caps led by two.

Picault thought he’d made it four for Vancouver in the 80th minute after being played in by Alessandro Schopf, but the goal was called back after a lengthy video review for a handball in the build-up by the Austrian.

The decision kept the home side’s hopes alive and Takaoka had to keep out Tim Parker from close range in the 89th minute.

Picault wasn’t to be denied a goal, however, and two minutes into stoppage time, the winger timed his run to perfection to get onto a Gauld through ball, rounding Burki and slotting home a fourth for the visitors.

It was a good victory for Vancouver. Another three points on the road, making it seven points from their three straight away matches in MLS, with a good cup win in there as well.

The road travels may be finished for a short spell but the games continue to come thick and fast for the Whitecaps. They’ll be back in action on Wednesday evening at BC Place when they host Sporting Kansas City, a side showing some signs of life in recent weeks but still languishing down the bottom of the standings.

With the table so tight right now, every single point is crucial for the Whitecaps right now.

FINAL SCORE: St Louis 1 – 4 Vancouver Whitecaps

ATT: 22,500

SCORING SUMMARY:
9’ – VAN – Brian White (Ryan Gauld)
28’ – STL – Nokkvi Thórisson
44’ – VAN – Brian White (Fafa Picault)
63’ – VAN – Ryan Raposo
90’+2 – VAN – Fafa Picault (Ryan Gauld)

STATS:
Possession: STL 46% – VAN 54%
Shots: STL 14 – VAN 14
Shots on Goal: STL 3 – VAN 9
Saves: STL 5 – VAN 1
Fouls: STL 10 – VAN 10
Offsides: STL 2 – VAN 2
Corners: STL 5 – VAN 5

BOOKINGS:
19’ – STL – Njabulo Blom
45’+7 – VAN – Sebastian Berhalter
53’ – STL – Jayden Reid
71’ – STL – Chris Durkin
88’ – VAN – Andrés Cubas
90’+6 – VAN – Levonte Johnson

ST LOUIS: Roman Bürki; Tomas Totland, Josh Yaro (Samuel Adeniran 70’), Tim Parker, Jayden Reid; Njabulo Blom (Akil Watts 46’), Chris Durkin; Josh Klein III (Caden Glover 90’+5), Edward Löwen (Hosei Kijima 77’), Indiana Vassilev; Nokkvi Thórisson (40.Michael Wentzel 90’+4) [Substitutes not used: Benjamin Lundt, Jake Nerwinski, Joakim Nilsson]

VANCOUVER: Yohei Takaoka; Mathías Laborda, Ranko Veselinović, Bjørn Inge Utvik; Ryan Raposo (Sam Adekugbe 84’), Sebastian Berhalter (Levonte Johnson 90’+3), Andrés Cubas, Luís Martins (Alessandro Schöpf 67’); 25.Ryan Gauld, Brian White (19.Damir Kreilach 90’+3), Fafa Picault (Ralph Priso 90’+3) [Substitutes Not Used: Isaac Boehmer, Belal Halbouni, Giuseppe Bovalina, Pedro Vite]

REACTION:

VANCOUVER WHITECAPS

HEAD COACH VANNI SARTINI

On his team’s dominant performance over St. Louis on the road:

“We’re doing very well. Today, we played really well. I think the win was never in discussion, even when we were 1-1, we were clearly the better team on the field. Then we had the chance to score the second goal and then, you know, they [St. Louis] tried with a lot of intensity to always be there but we were always calm and collected defending and with the ball. Deservedly so, we scored multiple goals and very happy because we did a good job and got another three points on the road. I think we already have more points on the road than at the end of last year. We still have four [road] games, so let’s try to make it a lot more.”

On the high-scoring games with St. Louis across the last two seasons:

“Maybe it’s because they are so aggressive when they try to attack. They play with such a high line that is risky, they can score a lot of goals but also they can concede goals. Also, in four games I think Brian scored seven goals against St. Louis so, I don’t know, maybe he has a particular, I would say, predisposition to score against them.”

FORWARD BRIAN WHITE

On his scoring record against St. Louis:

“Obviously I have a little bit of a good record against them so it’s nice to continue to score goals, but ultimately it’s good to get wins and, you know, it’s two in a row against them that we’ve won so that’s the most important thing right now, is to rack up some wins.”

WINGBACK RYAN RAPOSO

On the home-heavy league schedule ahead and the opportunities it grants the team:

“I think we have a great opportunity here. I think we only have four away matches in league play. We’ve been great on the road this year, we’ve shown what it takes to get three points on the road which is very, very, very tough in this league. Now we need to focus on using the crowd, using the home field advantage to dominate teams like we have in previous years at home. I think we have all the players that we need to make a deep run and ultimately try to win MLS Cup. That’s the goal for me and the guys that I speak to. I don’t think the goal is top four, the goal is to win MLS Cup so whatever gives us the best chance of doing that, we’re all pushing in that direction.”

ST LOUIS CITY

INTERIM HEAD COACH JOHN HACKWORTH

Opening Statement

“First of all, sorry for making you guys wait. We had to have a little come-to-Jesus moment in the locker room there. The second thing is that that performance is embarrassing. It’s not acceptable to our club, not acceptable with the city, not acceptable to the fans who invest so much time, energy, money into us. So we’re embarrassed and we have to own that.”

Where did that begin? The players, you give an early goal, is it just from the very start, is it just not there?

“No, not necessarily. Look, we have some problems, and I can’t sit here right now and tell you exactly what it is. But when you’re playing a good team, and Vancouver is a good team. We know how they are going to try to play against us. If we don’t — if we aren’t able to defend just the general ideas of what an opponent is going to do against us, we don’t have a lot of chance to win an MLS soccer game. I give our team a lot of credit for coming back into the game for getting an equalizer. That’s two weeks in a row we did that, and we’ll try to build on that for sure. But to give up one at the very end of the half, again, on a very, I would say predictable-type ball that should not beat us. And to have the heads go down and the body language; it’s something, again, I don’t want to sit here and tell you that I have all the answers right now because I don’t. But I don’t want to defend things that aren’t real and I want to make sure that I can look at the game film, talk to the players, talk to the staff and try to fix as much as we can in a short amount of time as we head into Seattle.”

The players’ response, presumably they saw what we all saw; it was not good

“Yeah, I think the players are embarrassed, too. But as the interim head coach, I have to take responsibility for that. And we have to evaluate whether it was our tactics, whether it was something that we did or we did things differently, I’d be happy to talk to you about that if you want. But at the end of the day, Vancouver is a team that plays a certain way and we have to be able to at least at a minimum collectively come together as a group and work towards that and that didn’t happen for us.”

Might be more of the same of what you already said, but last week you said you were looking for progress and this match was strikingly similar to the loss last week in Colorado. Any things that you can point to off the top of your head that did feel like progress or is it one of those performances that you have to look at everything?

“Yeah, there’s not a lot you can point at as a positive. There’s not.”

What are the options going forward here?

“We are still a team that’s not at full strength, and I don’t want to make any excuses, but we’ll have more options heading into Seattle because we’ll have a couple players coming back from injury and then we have a summer transfer window that opens, and we’ll have players that we already brought in that will be available for Friday, or for Saturday in Kansas City, and that’s the options. But it starts on the training field. We have to get our mentality right. We have to get the competitive nature of — these guys are good soccer players. There’s no doubt about that, but we have to bring them together, play collectively and then try to go out and show our fans, ourselves, that this kind of performance is not acceptable.”

Was there anything in practice this week that seemed that this might be in the offing?

“Nothing on the field. Nothing on the field. I felt good about the practices. The guys certainly worked hard. Put in a good shift, that kind of thing. But at the same time, we have things wrong that we have to do a better job identifying, and again, I’m going to hold myself accountable for that.”

Defensively, the goals look like so many other goals where guys get loose and there’s no one; Brian White gets his alone, which seems like that probably wasn’t in the game plan.

“Probably not. Probably not.”

So, when you see those same things happening defensively, what does that say?

“It says that we are not a very good team right now, quite candidly. So, we’ve got to, I don’t want to say too many clichés here. We didn’t play well. That’s not acceptable in this building, and we have to go fix it. The only way we can get better is by fixing one thing at a time. We thought we had fixed those through the week. We felt really positive about it. I even felt positive at halftime; that despite giving that up goal late, we could get back into this game. For about ten minutes in the second half, it felt like we could find the equalizer and put it on our terms. That didn’t happen for us. Then the other goals come, and those are not acceptable, and especially the reactions of the group.”

To focus on things individually, Nökkvi Thórisson has been a striker by necessity over the past month or so, but seems like he has shown some progress, especially with the two goals against the Whitecaps. Do you see him as a striker?

“Yeah, I think Nökkvi, I don’t want to say anything positive in this press conference, but there’s not a lot to say. But if you look at Nökkvi, he’s been asked to play out of position and done an admirable job of that and provided us with some goals. So, there are still positives in there. The problem is not necessarily any individuals. It’s more of a collective. We’re not a good team right now and we’ve got to fix that.”

MIDFIELDER EDWARD LOWEN

On why the team struggled tonight:

“I mean, we have to analyze that. I don’t know where — we have to figure it out within the group, what the problem is, why we have performances like this. San Jose, we have an amazing game. Colorado, in many ways, wasn’t that bad of a game. At two-one, we can still do something. Then we ended up losing four-one, which sounds very high and wasn’t deserved. But today the performance was just very bad.”

On whether he felt the team was going to struggle early on in the match:

“I don’t think it was a bad first half. It was not that Vancouver had a lot of chances. They were just, like, circulating the ball the entire time, and we were just running back and forth and back and forth. Our pressing wasn’t good. It wasn’t, yeah, we didn’t wait for the right triggers. We were not — the intensity was not there when we were pressing. But they still didn’t have a lot of chances. We were just caught sleeping a couple of times and that’s why we conceded easy goals.”

On how the team is going to use its upcoming road trip to make progress returning to form:

“Yeah, I think we definitely need to have a sit-down with the guys, and we need to talk about their performance. This today is just not going to work out, and it’s just unacceptable. What we did today is unacceptable. And as I said in Colorado, okay, like we shouldn’t have lost the game four-one. That there was a very high result, but there was at least a desire there. But today was just an unacceptable performance. And I would say now we have two games coming up, and we have to get points. We have to be able to deal with the pressure to get at least three points. And then we have the Leagues Cup coming up, which is a good thing. We have a couple of guys coming in. And then we need to figure this out, and we need to have belief in ourselves again that we are able to turn this around. Yeah, so I think this is then, for us, kind of a reset, and we have to use that.”

MIDFIELDER CHRIS DURKIN

On his feelings about the game against Vancouver:

“I think you know; you could see on the pitch right now it’s a fragmented group. It’s not a group that’s together. And you know, it’s frustrating to me, especially, you know, we’ve talked about, it’s a sellout crowd and to walk into the tunnel with the performance like that is frustrating and embarrassing for the fans. So, we need to do everything possible. You know, words are cheap right now, I think action is the most important so we can talk all we want but it’s the action that counts.”

On the team’s performance tonight:

“Yeah, I think you know, going into the game we knew that Vancouver was good on the counterattack, and you know, can definitely catch you hanging. They did it when we went to Vancouver, that same thing to us. So yeah, I felt like a good momentum, like you said within the first 15 [minutes] of the second half. You know, one doesn’t find the net, but that’s where you just got to keep pushing on. And you know, stay. The hardest thing to do is score and right now the goals are easy against us right now. And you know, we really need to take a big look at that. Yeah, I think you know, we have the quality on the pitch, that’s not a question in my mind, but it’s a team sport. It’s 11 guys out there and how they can best gel together. And right now, we’re not gelling. And, you know, [John] Hackworth can talk about and take accountability and all that but I think it’s the players, the players have to step up and have his back and you know, everybody has to fight for themselves too.”

On where the problem for the team began against Vancouver:

“Just a run of results, and I think when you start to not win over a period of time, you start to have question marks and you know, pointing fingers and that’s the worst thing in this sport is pointing fingers and talking behind people’s backs. All of that it’s you know, it’s like I said, it’s a group of 11 out there and then another group of, you know, five other guys that come onto the field, four or five, so we all have to find a way to sync together again. You know, I believe in the character of the group. I think there’s a lot of really good individuals on the team, a lot of you know, good personalities, but something’s not clicking right now. I think it’s up to not only the leaders in the group, but everybody to rise to the occasion right now because there’s nothing else to do. You know, a lot of guys are out of contract next year. You’re fighting for your life. You’re fighting for your job.”

FORWARD NOKKVI THORISSON

On if the team is falling apart:

“No, I mean, bad performance today, but now it’s time to stick together and problem-solve. I would not say the team is falling apart or anything like that. We got back into the game today, so that’s the positive, but now it’s just a matter of problem solving together and focusing on the positive and bounce back from this.”

On if it was frustrating to score a goal but then have the game go sideways after:

“It’s a team sport, so obviously I’m also a part of the loss, so it’s collective. It starts upfront with me. I’m the first defender and so, yeah, frustrating is the right word.”

      
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Authored by: Michael McColl

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