Whitecaps Football Shorts # 8

Still on a high from Saturday? Yup, me too.

We could be brought back down to earth with a bump this Saturday though as the Caps face a much harder test in Philadelphia.

The depth of the squad will already be put the test through injuries and international duties.

Captain Jay De Merit and Kiwi defender Michael Boxall will be away with their national teams. Russell Teibert has an agreement from Teitur to the Canadian U-20 coach that he won’t play more than 65 mins in Philly (although TFC have recalled two of their under 20 guys to seemingly warm a BMO bench). Nizar Khalfan wasn’t released to Tanzania due to the late request.

Injuries can’t be avoided but the whole international thing is a pain in the ass at times. We said back in September that the Caps faced a quandary when it came to international players.

You want the Club to be signing the best players you can, but if you’re going to lose them for a lot of the season to the never ending round of friendlies, qualification games and continental tournaments, they’re not going to be much use to you.

You can understand MLS not postponing games for internationals on other continents but when they play games the same weekend as US matches, I just find it baffling, especially in Gold Cup year.

There should be a rule in MLS for postponing games if a team has a certain number of players away on international duty. My team in Scotland, East Fife, used to get lower league matches called off when we had three Trinidad guys away.

That’s why it’s great someone like Eric Hassli isn’t an international. Others may lose their DPs over the season for call ups, we won’t be. Shrewd move.

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So it looks like the whole Seattle Uniglobe debacle has reached a satisfactory conclusion, in that prices are lowered and Southsiders are snapping up tickets left, right and centre.

Poor Neal at Uniglobe must be snowed under. Full credit to him today, he’s got back to people and promptly answered emails we’d sent him.

The way around this of course is to just give the Southsiders a block allocation so that he doesn’t have to deal with 275 people calling in seperately to buy their ticket.

Still some unanswered questions with the whole thing. Why do I have an email from Sunday telling me my ticket would be $39 plus HST? What prompted the change? And if it was a miscommunication, why was this allowed to happen – again?

Hopefully lessons have been learned and we won’t be having to write about ticketing issues again. Hey, I can dream.

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The latest MLS Power Rankings came out on Tuesday and Vancouver Whitecaps came in 8th.

Is a league table really not good enough?

These weird and wonderful rankings mean little in reality but it’s nice to see those outside of vancouver take notice and praise what the team achieved.

Toronto are ranked rock bottom in 18th place. Maybe these rankings do know what they’re talking about after all.

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Reports coming out of Seattle are suggesting that Qwest Field could be about to undergo a name change to Century Link Field following a merger.

Other reports though have suggested that this may not be a done deal.

We hope the deal does go through, as we’ve already got our new name for the place. Welcome to the Clink.

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Football films are generally pretty hit or miss. For every “Damned United” there is a “Goal 2”.

Every now and again though, one comes along that just has you itching to go see it. For us, “Rise and Shine: The Jay DeMerit Story”, is ticking all those boxes.

I don’t think I need to go into Jay’s meteoric rise through the lowest levels of non league English football to appearing at the World Cup. We all know the wonderful story and to see this captured in documentary form will be amazing.

As a huge fan of the non league scene, this part of the film is what is interesting me the most, but just watching the trailer, and his role in Watford Premiership playoff game at Wembley, gives you goosebumps.

We may need to wait that little bit longer though, as the company that made it are sadly still searching for financing and distribution rights.

There is a private screening on Monday evening (we believe AFTN’s invite must have got lost in the mail!), and the Southsiders have a couple of tickets to giveaway to some lucky punters on Saturday who go to their showing of the Philadelphia Union game at their ‘away’ pub Doolins on Nelson Street.

To get everyone in the mood for not being able to see the film, here’s the official trailer:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghBM-3y629E&w=500&h=311]