Time for Whitecaps to make new memories in old home

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They say you can’t go home again. Tell that to the Salt Lake City Whitecaps.

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Vancouver’s MLS team returns to the city that it called home for the first half of the 2021 season, when COVID-19 pandemic travel restrictions made it impossible for cross-border games to be played.

“Our old stomping grounds,” mused centreback Jake Nerwinski. “It’s a weird one. You call it home for a few months, you get comfortable there. I think we’ve probably lost all the acclimation we once had for the altitude and the heat.”

It was the second straight nomadic season for the Caps, who played in the bubble tournament in Orlando, and also relocated to Portland for the latter half of 2020. But since returning to their permanent home in the Pacific Northwest last August, the Caps haven’t been back to Salt Lake City since ‘hosting’ the Houston Dynamo on July 20, 2020.

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Nerwinski and his wife Allie tried to make it a home from just about the moment they stepped off the plane.

“We got our dog (Ash) the day we flew in. We had a little set up, we timed it and were ready to go,” he said. “That’s probably my best memory (of Salt Lake). It was my first dog ever. I never had a dog. My parents deprived me of having a dog and then they got a dog as soon as I move out.”

While the dog days of summer have officially passed, the MLS playoff races are heating up. The stakes for Saturday’s Whitecaps game at Rio Tinto Stadium against their former landlords couldn’t be bigger.

NEXT GAME

Saturday

Vancouver Whitecaps vs. Real Salt Lake

7 p.m., Rio Tinto Stadium, TV: TSN, Radio: AM730

Wednesday’s 2-1 win over Colorado put the Caps into seventh place and a playoff position with 33 points, the same total as the L.A. Galaxy have amassed in two fewer games.

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Right below the playoff line, also on 33 points, are Nashville and Portland, who have both played 26 games like Vancouver. The Rapids are one game back of them, with a game in hand.

That’s four teams on 33 points, and six separated by just two points.

“It’s a huge game for us. It’s a big weekend for a lot of teams in the West,” said Nerwinski. “I think every weekend from here on out, it’s going to be like this. At this point, every game is like a playoff game. Whenever you can get points, it’s a win.”

Head coach Vanni Sartini has boiled down the team’s playoff aspirations to a simple formula: win all their home games, and grab some points away when they can. After Saturday, they have four home games remaining (Nashville, Aug. 27; LAG, Sept. 14; Seattle, Sept. 17; Austin, Oct. 1) and three on the road (San Jose, Sept. 4; Colorado, Sept. 14) including their Decision Day showdown with Minnesota United on Oct. 9.

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Last season’s playoff qualification came down to the final minutes of their game against Seattle, with a Max Crepeau save on Fredy Montero preserving a 1-1 draw, while Real Salt Lake scored a last-gasp, 95th-minute winner against Sporting Kansas City to qualify for the playoffs. If the Caps had lost, the Galaxy would have snagged the last spot on a tiebreaker, with all three teams finishing with 48 points.

“This is just how this league is. You look at the East as well as the same thing over there,” Nerwinski said of the standings, which has also has six teams — three in playoff position, three just below — separated by just two points.

“It just shows how much parity there is in the MLS right now. It’s good that we’re fighting for a spot. We clawed back from a pretty difficult start — again — and if our start was better, we’d probably be in a better place right now, a little bit more comfortable. But maybe we don’t like being comfortable sometimes.”

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RSL (10-7-8) are currently sitting fifth in the Western Conference, four points up on the Caps (9-6-11) with a game in hand. In their last six meetings with the Claret and Cobalt, the Whitecaps have gone 4-2-0 with 11 goals for.

While the Caps are nearly fully healthy — only Javain Brown (ankle) and Deiber Caicedo (season ending surgery) will miss the game — they’re being hit with a short turnaround from Wednesday’s game, a factor exacerbated by the thin Utah air and expected hot, humid temperatures at kickoff.

Vancouver had a short recovery session Thursday, and another truncated if intense session Friday, bookended by video sessions on their planned tactics. The lineup will be a much different look than their mid-week game, as will their game plan. The intense pressure that bottled Colorado up and led directly to Ryan Gauld’s second goal in the first half isn’t a sustainable strategy at 1.3 kilometres above sea level.

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The expected starting midfield duo of Russell Teibert and Andres Cubas have been given the responsibility of assessing the team’s fitness, and either triggering or waking off the press.

“It’s an enormous challenge,” Sartini said of the game.

“We need to be intelligent in our pressure. Last game we did 70 minutes of being in the face of Colorado. I don’t think it’s going to be possible with the altitude then after three days, so we’ll need to also be intelligent and manage the moment of the game where we can be relentless. I think we have a level of maturity that this little decision can be taken by the players on the field.”

Gauld had two goals Wednesday to push his season total to six across all competitions, along with eight assists. But of those 14 goal contributions, nine have come in the final eight games (four goals, five assists) and he was a menace both for Colorado mid-week and his own goalkeepers in training this week.

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Sartini said it was just a matter of time before he returned to the form the team showed in the final half of last year’s memorable playoff push.

“I think it’s just conditioning,” said the coach. “He was very unlucky with concussions, then the knock, then COVID. For the first three months of the season, we had him a week in, a week off and then 50 per cent. And he is such a guy that he sacrificed himself for the team and he never said no to me. ‘I want to play, I want to try (he said)’ and it wasn’t the Ryan Gauld that we knew. When he got into condition, he’s a player who is one of the best number 10 in the league, pure and simple.

“He’s the definition of a DP in my opinion. He’s a guy who makes the team better, makes the player next to him better and who is a positive force in the in the locker room.”

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