Author Archives: Andrew Bates

As Canada fights its spying penalty, the facts only get worse

by Andrew Bates

With Canada Soccer fighting a six-point sanction from FIFA on and off the pitch, we learn more about its drone spying at the Paris Olympics

Bev Priestman is seen walking on a soccer field wearing a trenchcoat.
Bev Priestman, Canada women’s soccer head coach, was banned for a year as part of an investigation into drone use by an analyst at the 2024 Olympics. PHOTO: AUDREY MAGNY/CANADA SOCCER

In March of this year, Bev Priestman had a problem. One of the Canadian women’s team manager’s analysts had refused to engage in “spying” on opposing teams. What was she to do?

The analyst, tasked with providing information on opposing teams had written a tersely-worded email putting into writing a conversation they’d had with Priestman on “spying.”

In point form, they give three good reasons they don’t want to do it: “Morally,” then “My own reputation within the analysis field,” then “Potentially being unable to fulfil my role on a matchday.”

“Just wanted to confirm that you will not be asking me to fulfil the role of “spying” in the upcoming camp & future camps,” the analyst wrote.

Priestman reached out to an individual with the same name as an HR consultant used by the national team about the “formal email on ‘spying’ ” she had received.

“I know there is a whole operation on the Men’s side with regards to it,” she wrote, adding that she asked the analyst “to propose a alternative solution as for scouting it can be the difference between winning and losing and all top 10 teams do it.

“Just after guidance really as to what from a HR stand point I can do or do I need to find another solution in resourcing? It’s a tricky one and it’s formal for a reason I feel…”

These were the emails that got Bev Priestman kicked out of the Olympics and banned from soccer for a year, according to FIFA’s reasons for its sanctions against Priestman, the Canadian Soccer and two of its coaches released Monday.

It’s part of a very stupid debacle that started when one of the two coaches, Joey Lombardi, got arrested July 22 while trying to fly a drone over a New Zealand practice in St. Etienne. It’s rippled out to include a six-point deduction against the defending Olympic champions, as well as allegations of systematic spying which threaten to soil two of the best things to happen for long-suffering Canadian fans: women’s team’s gold medal and qualification for the 2022 men’s World Cup.

Canada is fighting: On Sunday, the women’s team beat France 2-1 to stay alive in the tournament, despite the penalty, and on Monday, Canada Soccer announced that it was appealing the points penalty because it “unfairly punishes the athletes” and “goes far beyond restoring fairness to the match against New Zealand,” with a date Tuesday at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Canada women’s soccer legends Christine Sinclair and Stephanie Labbé said they hadn’t used the footage. Vanessa Gilles, the goalscorer on Sunday, gave an interview where she said they were powered by the desire “to prove people wrong when all this shit is coming out about our values, about our representation as Canadians. It’s not us, we’re not cheaters, we’re damned good players.”

All this has been a massive psychological blow for fans who see themselves as backing an underdog, a scrappy hard-working group of good kids struggling to make space in Canada’s hockey-mad sports culture for soccer and to make space for Canadians in a sport that rarely takes them seriously either. The points penalty has become another hurdle to leap, or evidence of some lingering unfairness against Canada, even though we’re the ones that cheated.

After Canada asked for the reasons for its decision, FIFA has posted its quasi-judicial ruling recommending the six-point, C$310,000 fine against the federation, finding it broke a rule in the competition rulebook against flying drones over training sites, and banning Priestman, Lombardi and assistant coach Jasmine Mander for a year.

As a court reporter and occasional soccer writer and talker, this lit my brain up in a particular way. The decision goes some way to confirming what is reported through anonymous sourcing in a number of articles by TSN’s Rick Westhead: that Canada Soccer coaches asked staffers on its men’s and women’s teams to watch opposing teams practices long before Lombardi’s arrest at the Stade de Drury.

Lombardi himself claimed in a statement filed with FIFA that he did his droning on his own account because he “wanted to impress the Canadian Women’s technical staff with informed/accurate analysis to elevate my role for future opportunities with the team.” Tragically for him, he went once without getting caught, but didn’t get anything usable, and came back for a second try at it.

Canada Soccer first called him an “unaccredited analyst” before later admitting he was an employee, and Priestman said it doesn’t represent “the values we stand for” and valiantly offered to withdraw from the New Zealand game.

But when the association’s CEO Kevin Blue sent Priestman home altogether, saying in a statement that “additional information has come to our attention regarding previous drone use against opponents,” FIFA’s disciplinary body, who had not received this info, asked, hey, uh, where’s our copy?

That ended up being the emails between Priestman, the analyst and the HR consultant. Canada Soccer has blamed it all on former men’s and women’s national team coach John Herdman, according to the decision.

“Canada is investigating the history of this matter, but we suspect that the practice of using a drone
stems back to John Herdman when he was the head coach of the women’s national team,” the CSA wrote in a statement to FIFA. “In other words, this was a practice started by one person – John Herdman – and continued by Bev Priestman. It was not facilitated by the federation.”

Herdman, now behind the bench in MLS at Toronto FC, denied using drones or spying “at an Olympic Games or World Cup.” But he and the men’s program have featured heavily in Westhead’s reporting, with a July 26 story offering the scene of Herdman showing drone footage to players ahead of a World Cup qualifier against Honduras in August 2021.

Two days later, Herdman was quoted in an AP story about Honduras reportedly stopping a training session after seeing a drone overhead.

“I’d imagine there’s probably a lot of people in Canada that fly drones, I’m sure,” Herdman is quoted as saying the day before. “I know for sure we won’t be heading into people’s countries too early because with drones these days, people can obviously capture footage. You’ve got to be really careful. So yeah, you got to be careful in CONCACAF. It’s a tricky place.”

France is, indeed, being very careful about drones this Olympics, as Lombardi now knows after spending three days in jail and getting an eight-month suspended sentence. In the decision, FIFA notes that Canada was told at least three times that the official tournament rules this year banned the use of drones, which is one of the two breaches the federation is accused of.

The other is “offensive conduct or violation of the principles of fair play,” or the idea that drone spying creates an uneven playing field by giving teams “real-time aerial views and data that are not accessible to others.” It violates the integrity of the sport by allowing “access to elements, tactics, and other preparation actions” that the team wants kept private, FIFA argued.

It highlights the high importance of the Olympics and a country’s national team and the need for a sentence that’s proportionate but also deters others, saying Canada’s breach “merited severe consequences affecting their standing in the competition.”

Another theme of Westhead’s reporting, reflected in Priestman’s email, is that Canada was looking for any advantage it could get, under the impression that every team was doing something similar.

Former Chelsea legend and onetime Montreal Impact striker Didier Drogba shyly told CBC’s Ariel Helwani that “it happens, it happens few times … for me, I mean, they just caught them, that’s it.”

Tyler Adams, who plays for the US men’s team and for Bournemouth in England, told the Soccer Cooligans podcast that “every team does it in some capacity,” either with drones or more pedestrian means of spying.

In 2019, noted bucket-sitter Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds United team caught a fine when an intern was spotted outside a training session for second-tier rivals Derby County with binoculars. In an hour long slideshow slash press conference, Bielsa defended the practice as common in South America and wryly noted that it didn’t stop him getting blown out by Barcelona as Athletic Bilbao manager.

“Even though going and watching an opponent is not useful, it allows me to keep my anxiety low,” Bielsa said, closing his address by saying, “I repeat: Why do I do it? Because I think I’m stupid.”

For all this heartache, what great advantage did drone spying give Herdman? From Westhead:

“Herdman explained that the Honduran team favoured a 4-4-2 formation with either a medium or a high press and that simplicity was the key to Canada being successful in the important game, the source said.

“Herdman emphasized “turning the Honduran team around,” in the first 15 minutes, according to the source.”

Truly ground-breaking stuff, the kind of basic insight anyone could get by watching any of a team’s previous matches or media interviews. Canada in fact failed to turn the Honduran team around and drew 1-1 after getting a penalty in the 66th minute.

That leads to my favourite take on this, which comes from Vancouver Whitecaps coach Vanni Sartini, via Har Journalist. Sartini, whose team trains in the centre of a university campus, says he’s “against secrecy,” and never closes his practices anyways.

“We never try to spy on anyone and we don’t care if anyone comes to spy, because there’s no advantage to doing this. We are in 2024, where everyone can see every game of every team. Every action, every set play everywhere. The marginal gains to send someone to see a training session is almost zero.”

For “almost zero” gain, Canada Soccer has sent itself again into crisis, after dealing with the horror of sex abuse allegations against a women’s youth national team coach which an investigation found that Canada Soccer mishandled, and an ongoing financial crisis which saw matches canceled when players refused to play due to a labour dispute hampered by a contract which puts a clamp on the association’s cash flow.

Westhead, who has a track record of tough but fair reporting on Canada Soccer’s foibles, has come under criticism for the negative press from fans grasping at straws for a person to blame, with his former colleague Kristian Jack telling a OneSoccer panel Monday that Canadians can’t look for excuses.

“It’s a hard look in the mirror. Canadians have to stand on a high moral ground … this is our country doing it right now,” Jack said. “If you look at it, it has not been a good few years for what Canadians stand for in terms of ethic behaviour, how you treat people.”

The organization’s new general secretary, Kevin Blue, who comes from golf, was supposed to be the start of a new chapter, with new men’s coach Jesse Marsch leading the program to a transcendent Copa America and Priestman given a chance to expand her legacy after the gold medal win.

Instead, Canada Soccer is fighting from the moral low ground, muddying the country’s reputation and playing without a head coach — all three things their analyst had warned them about in March. If only they had fully read that “formal email on ‘spying’.”

Portland’s win should end MLS in 2020, but the sports machine keeps running

by Andrew Bates
The Portland Timbers lifted the MLS is Back tournament trophy Tuesday.
The Portland Timbers lifted the MLS is Back tournament trophy Tuesday, but the league is determined to play more games. (Photo: Jared Martinez, Matt Stith & Devin L’Amoreaux/MLS)

Could you imagine, as MLS pulled FC Dallas from the MLS is Back tournament on July 9 due to 10 positive COVID-19 tests – with two more in Nashville that would become nine before knocking it out of the tournament as well – that 36 days later a hoarse commissioner Don Garber would get up on the microphone to hand out a trophy and say “Difficulty is an excuse that history never accepts?”

Difficulty is something that has beset us all, as the COVID-19 pandemic descended on the world, infecting more than 20 million people and killing more than 745,000 globally. The struggle of health professionals to keep us alive is one, as is the act of keeping on as tragedy mounts and the places we turned to for community become places of danger.

It was the difficulty of hosting a sports tournament that didn’t need to happen in the first place that Garber was boasting about overcoming when he handed the MLS Is Back trophy, an improvised honour, to Diego Valeri of the Portland Timbers Tuesday night. The Timbers beat Orlando City SC 2-1 in an impressive, efficient performance that left one in awe of how they remained effortlessly in control for most of the game, allowing the Lions to get frustrated in possession and then flip the script and execute ruthlessly on attack.

Despite the focus on whether Portland’s Sebastian Blanco or Orlando’s Nani would prove their case as tournament MVP, it was centrebacks who were Timbers heroes. First a Diego Valeri free kick floated with impossible precision to Larrys Mabiala on the far post, to which Orlando soon replied when Mauricio Pereyra caught a laser pass from Nani and somehow had the time to turn while being tackled to fire his own. In the second half, Eryk Williamson dummied a shot, then fired a ball through the area that grazed Jeremy Ebobisse and then found the boot of Dario Zuparic, a defender who scored his first MLS goal since arriving this past offseason.

When the goal went in, there was joy; when the final whistle blew, there was joy; when the players rushed to a giant projection screen to greet the families they had to leave to be there, there was joy.

“The more difficult the fight is, the more beautiful the victory is at the end,” Mabiala said after the match. “We’ve been through many difficult games. … in the quarantine time, we’ve been talking a lot about what we wanted to accomplish and how we wanted to play.”

It was the end of a strange tournament, whose groups were adjusted in progress when teams withdrew, and in which interesting sides tended to do better than famous ones, some missing their best players after opt-outs. Orlando, who hadn’t placed higher than second-last in the east since 2016 (when they were third-last), beat much-hyped expansion team Inter Miami and last year’s No. 1 seed New York City in the group stage before knocking out Supporters Shield winners LAFC in penalties on their route to the final, thanks to the partnership of Nani and Pereyra as well as the contributions of fullbacks Joao Moutinho and Ruan. Cincinnati, which won all of six MLS games last year, won two of three in the group stage, including beating vaunted Atlanta United 1-0. Neither 2019 MLS Cup finalist made it past the first knockout round. Even the Vancouver Whitecaps, who were missing up to 11 players including their two best goalies, leaving 18-year-old Thomas Hasal in net, somehow won a game and made it to penalties in the first knockout round despite being outshot 106-27 in four matches.

In those circumstances, in some ways you can’t watch soccer the same. With players out of form and a pandemic on their mind, how can you judge someone for not placing every pass perfectly? How can you be expected to get results? As a fan, it’s done for your entertainment, but as sports, what is it for? What did anyone prove?

For the winners, the trophy and its place in the CONCACAF Champions League (whenever, you know, that happens), winning is enough.

“I’m very happy, because we made it count,” Blanco told reporters. “I want to thank my family, I want to thank my daughters, it’s been 40 days, it’s been very difficult for them, not only because of the loneliness but everything that is happening now. But like I said, we made it count.”

“The last ten days have been very hard because I had my son calling me every morning crying, asking me when I was going to come back,” said Mabiala, who has three kids, two of them toddlers. “When we had these conversations, we just told ourselves that we need to make it worth it.”

This league is a machine that produces sports, built to make its clubs overcome adversity and keep trying, and which sometimes rewards sacrifices with victory. But is every sacrifice worth it in the name of sports? For players who had to reheat their competitive form and left with an injury instead of a trophy? For Caps goalkeeper Bryan Meredith, who was far from home when his mother died suddenly? For Orange County residents, who faced a turnaround time of six days for COVID tests while MLS got theirs back in 12-24 hours?

Minus two teams, MLS was able to pull off the balance of the tournament without further positive testing after July 14. They wanted to play, and as frustrated as I was with the fact that the tournament should have been called off, I kept watching, up to the end. I got a little bit of joy.

But this is a machine built for one thing, and it hasn’t been turned off. Garber’s boast wasn’t just in defiance of the critics who thought the tournament couldn’t be done (safely), but against the backlash to the league’s return plans revealed last Saturday. Not 24 hours after he handed off the trophy, MLS played its next regular season game in Dallas in front of 2,912 fans at Toyota Stadium, against Nashville. More matches are planned, with fans where local rules permit. A risk assessment tool provided by Georgia Tech estimates that the chances that a group of 1,000 people in Collin County will have at least one person with COVID-19 is over 99 per cent. “If we have issues, we’ll deal with them,” Garber told reporters Saturday, but fans will have to sign a waiver to enter that prevents them from suing if they contract the disease.

The league asked its players to take a risk, and some of them did. But holding mass gatherings of this size, with this amount of danger, is reckless. We miss being in groups, and soccer companies and professionals face the financial penalties of not playing more of it. But this should have ended in Orlando, to wait to see if things are better next year.

After Tuesday’s game, when asked about the risk to fans, Caitlin Murray says Garber responded by citing player safety protocols, and added, “We’ve just got to get started, Taylor. We’ve got to get back and see if it can work.” You actually don’t have to try! The pandemic is not an opponent, and the only winning move is not to play. This is one difficulty that you can actually sit out. Regardless of our longing, the stakes are too high.

Dallas manager Luchi Gonzalez exhibited this sports-brain mentality when he told the AP that results in this match were secondary to a “celebration of getting to play” despite the ordeal in Orlando. “We’re gonna keep learning and we’re going to keep getting back up, and we’re gonna keep playing the game we love.”

Those are words generated by the sports machine. 745,000 deaths, with at least 165,000 in the U.S. Not everyone gets back up, and soccer shouldn’t increase that number by one.

We’re not ready for Christine Sinclair to leave

by Andrew Bates

Embed from Getty Images

It is a cruel joke that the woman around whom Canada’s soccer universe has revolved for 19 years is the one who doesn’t want the attention.

But Canada is out of the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, having lost 1-0 to Sweden in the round of 16, and all everyone is talking about is Christine Sinclair, who’s just finished her fifth tournament, and the play she didn’t make.

It’s hard not to talk about Sinclair. Her incredible talent, historic success, with two Olympic bronze medals, and tantalizing nearness to the world international goalscoring record makes her a magnet for Canadians and women’s soccer fans of all stripes.

But predictions she’d break the record at this tournament didn’t mesh with the more supportive role she’s adopted in the team as a new generation of players developed. She’s not a player that has spent games this year camping out in the penalty area against inferior opponents trying to match Abby Wambach’s 184 goals — she has been the engine of a team that went ten games undefeated through defensive discipline. That risk-averse, locked-in shape gave Canada just a tense 1-0 win in the tournament opener against Cameroon. In the 2-0 victory against New Zealand, Sinclair’s own chances never landed but she assisted on Nichelle Prince’s goal. Her only marker of the tournament was an emphatic strike from the left-hand side, an equalizer before an eventual 2-1 loss to the Netherlands

So it’s not a surprise that as Canada seemed desperate for a lift, losing in a knockout round game against Sweden, when a penalty did come from a desperate Desiree Scott broadside, for Sinclair it was an obvious choice. In a shootout earlier this year in the Algarve Cup against the same keeper, Hedvig Lindahl, she was the only one who missed. Janine Beckie should take it.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Janine miss, and so I went up to her, and I’m like, it’s yours if you want it,” she said after the match. “I have all the trust in the world in her.”

This moment is pure Sinclair, as it illustrates the gap between how she sees her role and how she is viewed by Canadians, who instantly began to compare the moment to Wayne Gretzky being left on the bench for the men’s hockey team’s shootout loss in the semifinal of the 1998 Olympics. But unlike Nagano, this decision was hers. It never occurred to her to be a talisman; she analyzed the situation clinically and acted, what-ifs be damned. The shot, low and to the left, wasn’t anything to regret, she told the midfielder.

“I said after the game, did you shoot it where you wanted to?” she told interviewers. “Then you have to credit the keeper, she made a world class save, and you move on.”

The things we talk about when we talk about Sinclair — the possibility that this could be her final World Cup match, the record, how badly we wanted to see her dominate a game again — just weren’t front of mind to her. And at the end of the day, the penalty wasn’t why Canada lost.

Embed from Getty Images

“You get all the glory if it goes in and you take the blame, it feels like, if you miss, and that’ll stay with me for a long time,” Beckie said after the game. She doesn’t deserve that. The game slipped out of Canada’s fingers in a dozen other moments.

“Why is this their only good goalscoring opportunity, on a VAR-reviewed penalty? They couldn’t get a good goalscoring opportunity in the run of play,” former national-teamer Clare Rustad asked on TSN.

The saved penalty was one of only two attempts Canada had on-target, with nine more missing or blocked. Throughout the match, but especially in its agonizing, wrenching final seven minutes of added time, Canada had many great runs with no finish; either passes with no teammate to cover or wild shots that caromed wide of the goal. Adriana Leon and Jayde Riviere increased the tempo, but the resulting chances were desperate and wild. Crosses would fly into the box for Sinclair, but Sweden’s central defenders would rise to head clear each time.

“Their midfielders cannot strike from distance,” Rustad said. “It’s a glaring hole in the development of Canada Soccer right now, is that we’re not producing strikers who can strike the ball from distance, and who are consistently threatening against good teams.”

Up and down the park, Canada has disciplined and gifted players: Beckie, the American-born midfielder who plays for the love of her Canadian parents, Ashley Lawrence, playing in her club Paris Saint-Germain’s home ground Parc Des Princes, Stephanie Labbe, a hero of those Olympic runs who appeared in her first World Cup and kept her side in the game with key saves, and Riviere, who wowed against New Zealand and added freshness to the game on the right on her introduction in the 84th minute. To say nothing of Jordyn Huitema, the 18-year old who routinely substituted in for Sinclair in friendlies but didn’t see the field here. But they haven’t been able to seize control of games, and Sinclair doesn’t do that on her own any more.

She is ceding more space, more opportunities to the players who she will leave behind, when she chooses to; while it’s hard to imagine that moment coming before the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, it’s hard to see her at the next edition of this tournament in four years. (Her eternal rival Marta, also having just completed her fifth World Cup for Brazil, gave an impassioned post-match interview Sunday that certainly sounded like a goodbye address.)

But we’re not ready for her to pass the torch just yet. We don’t want the pictures of Sinclair, eyes red with tears, to be our last memories of her on this stage. And they may not be — in that same interview, she talked about taking a brief break before returning to the NWSL’s Portland Thorns to win a championship. And there’s always those Olympics.

Until then, we are left with the heartbreak, and the sorrow that hangs around the goodbye to come.

How Vancouver loved and left Kei Kamara

by Andrew Bates

Kei Kamara walks into the Vancouver Whitecaps end-of-season press conference Oct. 30 with snacks. (Photo: Andrew Bates)

This piece originally ran in a Howler Magazine newsletter email sent Jan. 16, 2019.

The Vancouver Whitecaps have had a striker problem. In the years since Brazilian star Camilo bolted for Mexico while still under contract in the cold early months of 2014, nobody had managed to stick for more than a season as the star centre forward for Vancouver. So what was it that made Kei Kamara click with fans almost instantly?

“Me,” he says with a smile. “Kei Kamara.”

Despite the clamor—the fans “tell me how much they love me every day,” he has said—Kamara has been shipped off, his name added to the club’s list of one-and-done strikers. But his ability to bond quickly with a fanbase ensured he will be remembered fondly in Vancouver.

The 34-year-old striker’s arrival last off-season, through a trade with the New England Revolution, was looked on with wary eyes. In 2017, former Seattle Sounder Fredy Montero arrived, scored a serviceable 14 goals, and left. For his replacement, fans were hungry for a big name that could rival those pulled in by clubs like Toronto FC and LA Galaxy. Kamara’s MLS veteran status almost hurt him in that way, as if to say, “Instead of someone flashy, here’s someone reliable.”

But almost instantly, Kamara started winning favor, whether it was with his popular Instagram account or the goal he scored on his debut against the Montreal Impact. Here was someone that injected positive energy into the team.

“It’s different than where I played last year. Being in New England, played there, I loved it,” he said at the Whitecaps’ season-ending press conference Oct. 30. “But the connection that I had with people here was so much different.”

Kamara describes himself as someone who uses positive energy to lift up the people around him, a weaponized charm that has followed the 34-year-old wherever he goes.

“When I feel like people were down, when I feel like people are sleeping … I’m really loud, because I’m trying to wake everyone else up,” he said. “No matter if they were down, I was trying to inject some kind of energy into them to get, you know, some kind of positivity of whatever the situation was.”

He said he prefers playing where people feel the team represents the city, which gives him a sense of belonging.

“I click with the people around. I make them, not just friends or fans, they’re kind of part of me somehow,” he said. “And when I enjoy that … I have that different energy when I’m on the field, or off the field when I’m doing stuff, it just makes me want to keep going.”

For his birthday, the Curva Collective supporters group made a group tifo where they dressed in Kamara’s Sierra Leone jersey and flew a banner showing his heart-shaped hands goal celebration over the country’s flag.

“Sierra Leoneans around the world started posting that picture and started talking about … the fans of Vancouver, look at the love that they’ve shown our brother,” he said. “It’s not just about me, if they were just thinking, okay, we’re doing this for Kei, at the end of the day it went around.”

He was drafted in 2006 by the Columbus Crew, and bounced around San Jose and Houston before landing at Sporting Kansas City. He stayed there for five years before stints in England with Norwich City and Middlesborough. Eventually he returned to the league, rejoining the Crew.

“I did really well when I was in Kansas City, because I felt at home, I connected with the fans and all that,” he said.

He demurred about Columbus, saying “it was only a half season, really,” despite the fact that he tied for the Golden Boot and made a run to the MLS Cup final in 2015. He got into a public fight with Federico Higuain the next year and was subsequently traded to New England.

But his time in Vancouver was more positive. He scored 14 goals, same as Montero, and collected his 100th MLS goal and 300th MLS appearance in the process.

“Since I’ve been here I’ve felt like I’ve been here longer (than I have),” Kamara said.

That’s not to say it wasn’t a tumultuous year for Vancouver, who fired coach Carl Robinson and missed out on the playoffs by two points. Players lashed out at the end-of-year press conference, with longtime midfielder Russell Teibert saying only there are only “a few” players who played for the crest. Kamara passed on arguments over whether division cost the team wins.

“You’re gonna have that in every team … where you think that one or two of those players didn’t give it their all,” he said. “(There’s) still the energy that you can inject into those people that you think are not giving it. That’s my personality.

“I’m loud as hell in the locker room, I’m loud in the game, I’m always loud until I’m really annoying, but I’m only doing it for one reason, because I want all of us to succeed.”

Kamara also bonded with Alphonso Davies, the teenage sensation who moved to Bayern Munich this fall, from a Black Panther-inspired goal celebration in the first game. He said that being there for his last moment on the team, when he was substituted for the team’s new project, 16-year-old Simon Colyn, is one of his proudest.

“I didn’t come here to be a babysitter, even though I ended up being one, but good thing the kid graduated. He’s going to college,” he said. “I could be here next year, maybe I’m not, but to say that I was a part of that … then I’m proud of that day.”

It may now be his lasting legacy. He was one of an eye-watering 18 players to leave the club, with the team announcing they would not be renewing his contract Dec. 10. New manager Marc Dos Santos told MLSsoccer.com he just didn’t fit into the team’s “big picture.”

A day later, he was picked by FC Cincinnati in the MLS Expansion Draft and immediately traded to the Colorado Rapids.

“I felt good that I was going to stay in Vancouver for a little longer,” he would say in an article on the Rapids’ site. “Maybe I was reading the energy wrong. When I got the news that they weren’t interested in keeping me and I was being traded, I was shocked.”

Kamara cited that his new club has a “positive structure in place for me” as reason for optimism despite the team’s third-from-the-bottom finish in 2018. Back in October, he said that while money is good, being wanted is better.

“I could have stayed in England, but I came back to the league knowing the fact of what I want,” he said. “I want to be in a place where I’m appreciated. I want to be in a place where I’m connected to the people, the fans, on and off the field. And when I feel that, then I feel at home.”

For a moment, home was in Vancouver for Kei Kamara. That moment has passed, but he still left a mark on a city, if only for a year.

Vancouver Whitecaps take a quick trip to rock bottom in Kansas City

by Andrew Bates

I’ve never seen Stephen Marinovic this furious, after the third goal, and he looks furious all the time. (Photo: MLS)

The thing is, soccer as we know it isn’t guaranteed. People complain about soccer being low-scoring, but it is actually the game’s biggest wonder: The goal is large. The pitch is vast. The ball goes fast, because kicks are powerful. The ball only stays out of the goal because of collective will and group effort; if the wheels fall off, there’s no limit to how many goals a team can concede. Which brings us to the Vancouver Whitecaps’ 6-0, nine-man loss to Sporting Kansas City.

The weirdest part about the Vancouver Whitecaps’ worst-ever MLS game is that it didn’t come in a dire campaign (yet) but one that started with a small amount of promise. But the team has had a number of weak spots and questionable decisions, and while there’s a lot you can cover for or equivocate if you make the wrong choices repeatedly and are not bailed out by luck, a systems failure like Friday’s can smack you on the nose.

The team’s slimmer-salary strategy always makes these discussions difficult, because it creates a push-and-pull where the club tries to promote new additions to a skeptical fanbase envious of the star-studded acquisitions made by teams around the league. But while a Schweinsteiger or a Zlatan would certainly be nice, the Whitecaps’ issue has been a lack of continuity and cohesion. When the team lost talismans David Ousted and Jordan Harvey in the offseason and a bevy of other players, one of my worries was, how much turnover is insurmountable? How much change is too much? In such a situation, a solid preseason is invaluable.

Of course, three days before the season began, the Whitecaps traded away starting centreback Tim Parker for defensive midfielder Felipe Martins. Parker delivered three years of excellent service far exceeding his contract; he then demanded a raise higher than the club would bear. (Kristian Dyer reported he turned down $1.4 million over three years, a lot for a defender in this league.) It probably couldn’t have been helped, but it threw the team off balance in two key ways. It forced Jose Aja and Aaron Maund, alternately, to shoulder the burden of a starting lineup spot on defense, and it forced manager Carl Robinson to find a place for Felipe beside his coveted acquisition Efrahim Juarez, which my podcast pal Nick Thornton has suggested negates both. Aja and Maund, though not awful, have been only serviceable in a starting role, and neither has the chemistry with captain Kendall Waston on the backline that Parker was able to find.

But even then, all was not lost. Kei Kamara turned out to be an excellent talisman player that was able to take a leadership position and help bind the team together. The Whitecaps have won each of the games in which he scored, and none of the others. He was dropped from last week’s loss against LAFC with an adductor strain that also kept him out here and will likely keep him off the sheet for the next match against Real Salt Lake, who handled the Whitecaps easily not three weeks ago. Despite the cracks forming in the Whitecaps lineup, Kamara’s passion helped tie everything together and was a vindication of the club’s bargain buy approach. Without him, the team’s play has lacked fire for three straight weeks.

Perhaps the final straw, and the mistake most attributable to Robinson, is the decision to use a 3-5-2 formation. Robinson has been dismissive of obsessing over one formation versus another in past seasons, but put out a lot of signs he was considering a switch to the 3-5-2 in preseason. However, when the team took to the pitch, it only lined up that way for one half of a friendly, and then in the season itself only in the 4-1 loss to Atlanta. (Which, if you add to this game before the red cards, makes a -6 goal difference over 120-odd minutes of play.) The idea is that you use three centrebacks, and then you use two midfielders that drop down to add defensive muscle out wide. Here’s how that went, from Kansas City’s first goal, nine minutes in:

Committing those wingbacks leaves the central midfield exposed, which was exploited by a pass Aly Ghazal tried to break his lungs to prevent, while the closer midfielder, Felipe watched at a trot. In the second goal, Waston and Nerwinski collapse onto each others’ positions and can’t stop Johnny Russell’s shot. The third goal was a wonder, made possible by the fact that six Whitecaps were lying back as opposed to pressing Jimmy Medranda. All this puts so much pressure on Waston to perform, which he did not, and his heightened tension sets the stage for the wild conflagration that made this game unwinnable.

Waston fouls Roger Espinoza, but feels like maybe he didn’t (wrong) so he marches over to insincerely help up his opponent, bringing several SKC players in like a hurricane. In the resulting melee, Yordy Reyna and Juarez both get reds for lashing out at Russell, and I could continue to analyze the 9-man, 4-3-1 formation’s three ensuing goals, but I won’t. The previous club record for losing margin was four, the league record was seven, and if it wasn’t for goalkeeper Stephen Marinovic, it could have been nine, including a saved penalty.

The key point to make here is a counterpoint to Robinson’s post-match insistence that the game comes down to “fine lines,” and the team could have won if it wasn’t for misfortune. “(It was) fairly even, first fifteen minutes. Then we concede, and we’re 3-0 down in forty minutes. An incident then changes the game,” he told reporters.

But it wasn’t just the red cards, or the early deficit. It was also in how the club assembled these players, and the way he chose to play them, and all that happens before the opening whistle. Soccer doesn’t have to always work out. If you chip away at all the things that make a winning team — talent, cohesion, preparation, tactics — eventually you just have 11 people going it alone. Or nine. And all of a sudden putting six past them doesn’t seem that hard.

Opener win a bonding moment for Vancouver Whitecaps

by Andrew Bates

The duo of Kei Kamara and Alphonso Davies both scored their first MLS Whitecaps goals in the season opener.
(Photo courtesy the Vancouver Whitecaps)

The Vancouver Whitecaps started the season with a win to help us fall in love again with a team that has changed its face.

Last year, an injury to the as-of-yet unheralded Yordy Reyna in the preseason made the Caps’ potential a promise that wasn’t fulfilled until halfway through the campaign. So Kei Kamara taking first blood in the 2-1 win over the Montreal Impact sped up the process of endearing the city to its new crop of stars. Kamara arrived in what was a whirlwind offseason of comings and goings, with the Caps bidding adieu to at least 16 players — enough to stock an XI and most of a subs bench — including Fredy Montero, Matias Laba and franchise talisman David Ousted. The most recent, Tim Parker, who emerged in Vancouver as a stalwart and underpaid centreback, was locked in a will-they-or-won’t they contract battle, shipped just three days ago to New York for Felipe Martins. While the team’s branding for its new Unity jersey emphasized togetherness between the club, players and fans, having to photoshop Parker out of the advertisements was an admission that this is a team in the midst of change. The new recruits are interesting, but unproven. When the team posted Valentines Day memes for Stefen Marinovic and “Effy” Juarez, I was almost taken aback. It’s too soon, I thought dramatically. The wounds haven’t healed.

But on game day, things felt almost familiar. Kamara, Juarez, Felipe and Anthony Blondell made their debuts, with Aaron Maund playing at home for the first time, but the backline was otherwise intact, with Waston holding the armband. Alphonso Davies started the season in the starting lineup, and when his long, loping ball crossed in for Kamara to nudge home on 63′ this seemed like a team that, despite the fact that it came in so many pieces, could assemble easily. And it was fun to watch, Kamara and Davies dancing and performing the Wakandan salute from Black Panther. Seven minutes later, Davies finally got his own, a goal in MLS to validate a slow, patient approach to nursing his stardom. Screaming towards the goal, he waved with both hands, knowing that it was his moment, and Montreal goalkeeper Evan Bush was so turned around that he could only watch it bounce off him into the side netting. For Davies, this was a journey that stretched over 34 league games and two years; for Kamara, it was his first game as a teammate. But he was the first in to pounce with a hug as Davies was mobbed. They looked like they had playing together for years. Suddenly the tension of the offseason was gone: the focus was on the bright future in the season to come.

Maybe a bit too much, in hindsight. Montreal got a goal back when Matteo Mancosu headed in with ten minutes left, bringing the celebration high to a screeching halt for the 27,837 in attendance. What had been a raucous atmosphere in BC Place changed to a stunned murmur as fans and players alike seemed to remember that there was another team on the pitch, and a game still going that could still be lost. That the Impact was itself almost an afterthought in the midst of all this hullabaloo speaks to the significance of each goal, and the fact that that team is also undergoing a moment of transition as younger players are introduced. But despite the fact that Mancosu very nearly earned a second goal, Vancouver held on to start the season with a win for the first time since 2014. The start of the season is a clean slate, and the new-look Caps have started it with a great bonding moment. Where will it take us?

Check out episode 18 of the That’s So MLS podcast, a season preview where Nick Thornton and I lay out options for neutrals looking for a new team, at thatssomls.com or iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Whitecaps take no wins from a no-win scenario

by Andrew Bates

(Photo courtesy of Vancouver Whitecaps)

(Photo courtesy of Vancouver Whitecaps)

The true no-win scenario is something you can’t determine until you’re in the thick of it. This past week, the Whitecaps faced a nearly impossible task: two games in four days, with a flight to Mexico in the middle, the second against last year’s Liga MX Apertura winners.

But even impossible soccer games start at 0-0; certainly both games started brightly. You don’t realize you’re in Star Trek’s Kobayashi Maru test until you’ve already lost it: when wave after wave of attacks hit until you can no longer defend.

It’s the bright start that hurts the most. The first game, Saturday against the San Jose Earthquakes, could have been a footnote, another 0-0 draw that went nowhere. Certainly, that’s what the lineup indicated, with Matias Laba, Brek Shea and Sheanon Williams out of the lineup, held for Mexico. But then Hurtado stunned the Quakes two minutes in, a bit of brilliance out of nothing from a striker the Whitecaps leave isolated too often. Fifteen minutes later, he turned provider for Nico Mezquida, who perfectly shifted the ball from his left to his right to go up 2-0. Great, right? It all feels like it’s going well until David Ousted gets sent off.

The Great Dane faced no good choices on that play, as Kendall Waston and Christian Dean both came up for the same header and missed it, letting the ball lope towards Chris Wondolowski with about 35 yards of space. Instead of waiting for the threat to come, Ousted made the choice to come to meet it, a joust in which he couldn’t manage to avoid a foul. All of a sudden, those daydreams of Monterrey vanish and the Whitecaps were jolted into the present to meet A Big Problem.

Manager Carl Robinson’s decision to remove the goalscorer Mezquida is a choice he told the AP he would have “taken back,” a road chosen poorly as time closed in on him. So was Ousted’s challenge. Little mistakes and errors, cutting off options until there is no mistake: that’s the no-win scenario. The Quakes had 77.8% possession throughout the game, and though the fact that only four of San Jose’s 21 total shots were on target speaks well to the Caps, there’s no substitute for space and time. Nick Lima was able to pull into open space to score the tying goal and Anibal Godoy, sitting off the edge of the box, was on the ball long enough to call his parents before uncorking a stellar looping ball to score the go-ahead. The waves kept coming, and the loss came eventually, stinging all the more because they were two goals up.

That left the second leg of the no-win scenario against Tigres UANL. Flying to Mexico for what may be their highest competitive level of match ever, depending on how you rate the old NASL Cosmos and Rowdies, four days later against a team that didn’t play the previous weekend. That FC Dallas got their April 1 match rescheduled in the same circumstances shows how unenviable a position it is. And Tigres is in mid-season form as the Liga MX Clausura continues; the Whitecaps, on the other hand, still haven’t managed to combine the pieces this year, playing situationally-appropriate lineups based on the availability of players like Kendall Waston, Fredy Montero or Shea. The starting XI had only Ousted and Jordan Harvey in common to the one that started in California.

The CONCACAF Champions League has question marks that surround it, but you want to play teams that are better than you in order to improve, and if you want to win the competitions you are in and play at the highest possible levels, you must stand your head high, even if it means walking into El Volcan with a low chance of joy.

But it started bright enough, which is the pleasant surprise that brought pain later. The Whitecaps were able to stand the atmosphere, and it looked, through half-time, like they might be able to even bring a 0-0 draw home to Vancouver. But they weren’t able to get enough forward, sans one great chance from Mezquida. Again, wave after wave, and not enough bite on the counter; If the penalty for Tigres making a mistake is missing out on an opportunity and the penalty for Vancouver is conceding, you will make that mistake eventually. Waston did, trying to deflect the ball and kicking it into the goal instead. Tigres’ second goal from Eduardo Vargas, another screamer from outside of the box with lots of space and time. It was those last twenty minutes where the inevitability of it all came crashing down on the Whitecaps. 14 shots, with 7 on target, 79.4% possession. The waves kept coming.

The one counter to the admirable sporting philosophy of giving your all regardless of the odds during the season is that there is usually a match next week where you pay for it, and the Whitecaps face Toronto on Saturday without David Ousted and with the weight of a 0-1-1 record on their heads. It’s hard to look back positively on those games because once the whistle sounded, they seemed winnable, but those four days presented an insurmountable task. We have now seen how this team faces the walls closing in. Next time, perhaps they will create their own way out.

Alphonso Davies doesn’t have to answer to you

by Andrew Bates

(Photo courtesy Bob Frid/Vancouver Whitecaps)

(Photo courtesy Bob Frid/Vancouver Whitecaps)

The push for transparency and accountability shows up in the most unlikely places sometimes. Occasionally when MLS people talk about it, they speak of fans like annoying children, as if to say, “I can’t believe they care about this stuff.”

Criticism has a unique role in sports and soccer. It’s an entertainment, but teams are selling hope for future success, which brings joy enough to deal with the sorrow of any present-day losses. So GMs, coaches and players are held accountable to whether or not they are good enough to deliver the success that fans desire. When a manager like Carl Robinson or a player like Russell Teibert tries to stay positive in the face of a bad result, that frustrates some, as though fans want to see their sorrow reflected in their heroes’ faces to justify it.

If a coach doesn’t win enough, fans wonder if they will be sacked; if a designated-player striker like Octavio Rivero can’t score the goals that ostensibly justify his salary, they will be shown the door, and if a promising young prospect like Darren Mattocks squanders opportunities to score, some will question whether they are worthy of those opportunities. The promise of youth implies delivery, and sometimes people feel cheated when it does not arrive.

This brings us to Alphonso Davies. The 16-year-old is a true prodigy, in that it’s incredible to consider that he has this much skill at this level. He accomplished many key milestones last year, including first MLS start and first Whitecaps goal, in the CCL, both of which he’s repeated this year in just three games. It was on display in the Whitecaps’ 0-0 draw against the Philadelphia Union last Sunday, which was void of much interesting except for Davies’ eye-popping runs. When he’s on the ball, people seem to take a half a second to stop and watch. Look at his movement before this Techera chance, and his quick ball at the end of it:

davies

It’s a joy, and part of it is that it’s so audacious; so carefree, unlike the fundamental, mechanical slog that can characterize regular-season soccer. Carefree is the key word here, though. The Whitecaps have done a good job protecting him; holding him away from media, preventing him from getting an ego, trying, in a sense, to raise him. Giles Barnes, who just got traded, drove and cooked for “his son”, according to ESPN’s Julie Stewart-Binks. Robinson wouldn’t let him speak to media much, if at all, last year. But he can’t be hidden for ever. The league is starting to notice Davies, now. There are stories about him attracting interest from Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool. The AFTN Soccer Show noted that there’s chatter about whether he should join the senior Canadian national team, and he doesn’t even have his passport yet.

It seems scarcely fair to put him on the field with men old enough to be his father, but he’s clearly good enough for it. His composure and ability to score goals are clear. The question becomes, how should his successes and failures be judged? Kekuta Manneh is 22 and, debatably, has matured and become a reliable person to start any game. Davies could be four-to-six years away from it being fair to even hold him to that standard. That’s an eternity.

Davies appears to benefit from free run, and any young player starts to get shackled sometime. Maybe they don’t track back enough (though Davies does) or don’t score enough (though he’s doing that). What happens when he misses a sitter at a key moment? What will people say about the teenager on Twitter then? Can he stay protected for four, six years?

Davies presents an interesting challenge for the MLS world: a player free from accountability. This will be interesting because though I will always argue for the necessary role of criticism, soccer fans can be pretty negative sometimes, and this is a player for whom negativity is unwarranted. It’s just not important right now. He doesn’t have to answer to you. He should not be punished. He should learn. Expectations to deliver on promise can be a weight on a young player. If we can keep ourselves in check, he may be able to fly.

A new year brings new answers for the soul-searching Whitecaps

by Andrew Bates

(Photo by Andrew Bates)

(Photo by Andrew Bates)

The Vancouver Whitecaps have been through an identity crisis in the last year, asking who their players are and not liking the response. Some key additions may make those answers good ones.

The 2017 season starts for the Caps after a disappointing year that was supposed to have promise, but fell apart about midway through due to a few listless games and a few listless players. Part of the issue was the search for scoring touch that never came; in Octavio Rivero the Whitecaps hoped for the talisman who arrived with five goals in his first six games the year before. He was stone cold until he was moved, but after that point the Whitecaps were left with spare parts up front. While the salary was lighter, no player found themselves growing into the designated player mold, which nobody truly could. Pedro Morales had been a key playmaker, but in 2016 he was a leader that lagged behind, and left at year’s end.

In the preseason this year, it seemed that manager Carl Robinson seemed committed to encouraging stardom from players who hadn’t managed to break out, but supporters wished for someone that could be inspiring and, most importantly, put the ball in the goal. How do you find someone you know you can rely on? Pick someone you already know.

Fredy Montero’s signing was typically risk-averse from the Whitecaps. After bringing a number of signings in on hope that they are who they said they would be, they instead signed a veteran who is well-known to the league and Vancouver. He was brought in on a one-year loan, so no transfer fee was necessary up front and there was minimum responsibility in case it all fell apart. Montero is no diamond in the rough, but he came well recommended by Mauro Rosales, who helped set up the deal and then joined the team himself: another familiar face.

Both are former Seattle Sounders players, which is how fans knew them first. This creates a stumbling block for some. Does supporting a once-rival player betray a fan’s commitment? I think that in a league with salary cap, allocation and trades, you have to accept that players come and go, and as long as they represent the team, you have to trust them to do their best. If anything, it’s the old team and old supporters that should hurt, but for the new team, goals and time heal all wounds. Sebastien Le Toux, Pah Modou Kah and Blas Perez all took the same path, and if Montero is who the Whitecaps believe him to be, that has to be enough.

He did his best to prove it during Vancouver’s 3-1 aggregate win over New York in the CONCACAF Champions League semifinal. His goal, fired in after a deflection from a slick backheel by Tim Parker from an Alphonso Davies cross, was as much victory as confirmation: with fists clenched, confirming that he can score goals here that matter. I was at the first leg in New York, and it was a celebration of improbabilities: the Kendall Waston ping-pong header, David Ousted coming up strong from the penalty spot again, and after the red card, a frenetic exercise in frustrating Bradley Wright-Phillips. The second leg Thursday never gave Wright-Phillips more release. Instead, it allowed Davies to start and dazzle with a goal and some incredible runs, and it allowed Montero to shout: I am here.

The season starts Sunday, at home against the Philadelphia Union. There’s a lot to be decided: as of writing, the captaincy, currently carried by Kendall Waston, who was branded an outlaw after his awful disciplinary record last season but now believes he can lead. Yordy Reyna, after being acquired to add attacking flair, broke his metatarsal and will be out until summer, leaving his value mostly unknown, and Brek Shea, who had a good game against New York, still must prove he can surpass his past in England and Orlando.

But taking that series the way they did in two halves: through guts on the road and goals at home, proves something. They may be the team that the players, coaches and Vancouver wants them to be.

Canada starts strong at Rio 2016 with terrifying and terrific win

by Andrew Bates

Christine Sinclair collapsed after her 80th minute goal metres from where she left Australia's Lisa De Vanna flat on the turf. (Rovena Rosa/Agência Brasil)

Christine Sinclair collapsed after her 80th minute goal metres from where she left Australia’s Lisa De Vanna flat on the turf. (Rovena Rosa/Agência Brasil)

It was tough, tight and nerve-wracking on the pitch, but a 2-0 shutout on the scoresheet that puts Canada in a power position in Group F.

The current incarnation of the Canadian women’s soccer team has been empowered by the 2012 Olympic bronze medal win, but it’s a newer, less predictable squad that can’t be judged on those results. Lose flatly against Brazil in a friendly on a Saturday, hold them off long enough to get the win the next Tuesday. So the fate of Les Rouges in the opening match of the 2016 Olympics against 5th-ranked Australia was really anyone’s guess for about the first 20 seconds.

Christine Sinclair used veteran experience to catch Australia before they even got on their bikes, burning Alanna Kennedy and Laura Alleway with ease before setting up Janine Beckie for the fastest goal in Olympic women’s history. The game’s first minutes are rarely as important as their last minutes, but this squad needed to define what kind of Team Canada it was immediately.

What’s funny about the game’s first twenty minutes is how they defined the game but were mostly separated from its bulk by the red card to Shelina Zadorsky. The same exuberance that Canada showed in its last friendly against France helped it establish itself early on and it contributed to the foul that saw Canada go deservingly down to 10 players.

But although 4-4-1 is certainly not the formation head coach John Herdman anticipated before the game, the switch answered questions and brought results; Melissa Tancredi, a veteran of 2012 with a diminished role this year, made way like a good soldier for Rebecca Quinn. Her energetic play fit into the defense without missing a beat. It’s the defensive game that maybe gives the team its identity and purpose; a mix of young players and tough veterans scrapping it out as hard as they can to keep the team in the game and provide for the forwards.

Or in this match, just one forward. A transcendent forward in Sinclair whose service helped put Canada in front and who took advantage of Jessie Fleming’s long ball to put Australia away single-handedly. Her touch nudging the ball past rushing Aussie keeper Lydia Williams in midfield was perfect, just enough to leave Williams in the dust and give herself enough time before Lisa De Vanna arrived to send a loping chipped ball through the empty penalty area and into the goal.

Canada were lucky here. They did well after the ejection, but had Australia scored on the resulting free kick, it would have been over. The moments when Steph Labbé was on the deck with a leg cramp brought hearts into mouths. Beckie’s missed penalty in the second half could have been a costly missed opportunity. But with Australia in the middle ground of difficulty between Germany and Zimbabwe, they have got all three of the group stage’s most vital points and they were forced to fight together against the odds. Not a bad way to establish yourselves.

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