Whitecaps 6, Dynamo 2: ‘Chaos’ turns to joy in record-breaking win

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The Vancouver Whitecaps don’t care if you haven’t got your beer yet.

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They’re going to score anyways.

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The Caps scored twice inside of 15 seconds to start each half of the game on their way to a 6-2 win over Houston Dynamo Wednesday at B.C. Place.

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Pedro Vite had the first, 15 seconds into the game, while Brian White had the other, 10 seconds into the second half. Julian Gressel had a brace for Vancouver (5-5-5, 6th West) — the first of his career — while Sebastian Berhalter scored his first career MLS goal. Berhalter also set up Ryan Gauld for an injury time goal, breaking the team record for most goals scored in a game. It was also Gauld’s first of the season.

Houston (5-6-3) remained winless on the road this year, and dropped to ninth place in the West.

It was the first multi-goal game of Gressel’s MLS career. Vite now has three goals in his last four league games, bumping his career total with Vancouver to five in two years.

Here’s what we learned …

DICKENS OF A VICTORY

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It was the best of games, it was the worst of games.

The Whitecaps scored six goals for the first time in team history. It was also, according to head coach Vanni Sartini, “the worst performance of the season.”

“The first half we were completely terrible. Houston should have been up at least by two goals,” he said. “Don’t get misguided by the result. I’m the first one who defends the team and say that we play well even when we lose, but today we’ve been very, very, very lucky.

“We took 45 minutes of vacation basically, and of collective vacation.
There was a lot of effort, but there was no brain in what we were doing. And that was painful to watch … like literally painful.”

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OK, SO MAYBE IT WAS GOOD

“It’s beautiful. It’s fantastic,” Sartini eventually conceded on his team’s record-setting outburst.

“Guys, we scored the best kickoff goal in the history of the world. One scoring on their kickoff, and one in our routine that was — by the way, please write it down and underline it — it was prepared by my assistant coach Michael D’Agostino. So please give a shout out to him.

“I don’t know how many times we spoke, talking about creating a lot of chances and not scoring. During the week I said we wanted to outscored the xG for this game, and I think we did it.”

HALFTIME SMALL TALK

Reporter: “Quite the half, eh?”

Dynamo staffer: “That was chaos.”

But what chaos it was! Four goals inside 18 minutes, crossbars, posts, penalty kick shouts and semi breakaway saves.

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“(Chaos) is a good description,” said Sartini. “And it’s exactly what we want to avoid. We want to be organized, we want to be the best organized team in the league. And most of the time we are.”

Only six times in MLS history has there been four goals scored in the first 20 minutes of a game — and now the Whitecaps have been part of two of them. The first one they likely don’t want to think about too much, as they were down 4-0 away to LAFC in 2020 en route to a 6-0 loss, the most lopsided in team history.

The other times were:

5/9/2001: LA Galaxy at Tampa Bay Mutiny (2-2)

9/27/2003: Dallas Burn at San Jose Earthquakes (2-2)

8/25/2019: LA Galaxy at Los Angeles FC (3-1)

9/23/2020: #VWFC FC at LAFC (4-0)

8/6/2022: Minnesota United at Colorado Rapids (1-3)

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BY THE NUMBERS

13,222: Attendance Wednesday night, the lowest for a league game this season for Vancouver. They had 11,000 for a mid-week CONCACAF Champions League fixture against LAFC in April.

8: Number of games Houston had gone without conceding multiple goals.

22: Number of wins the Whitecaps have at B.C. Place (22-6-6) since coming home from pandemic exile in 2021. Only LAFC has more wins in that span. They also have 13 blank sheets, with Philly’s total of 16 the only one higher.

3: Number of cards handed out in the 69th minute. The Oscar for the evening goes to Whitecap Mattias Laborda, who sold a blow to the head like he was Sylvester Stallone, getting Nelson Quiñónes ejected from the game, while he also earned a yellow card for his conduct in the ensuing fracas. Coco Carrasquilla also earned a yellow card for Houston.

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3: Number of times Vancouver has scored five goals in a game in one season, the first of the MLS era. They beat Montreal and Real Espana by 5-0 scores earlier this year.

0: Wins Houston has had in Vancouver. They are now 0-9-3.

QUOTE REMINDER #1

“They are very, very hard to break. There are very good defensive team. I don’t think we’re gonna have our usual 15 chances because they defend very well. We’re going to have maybe five chances.”

— Vanni Sartini, on Tuesday, the day before his team had five chances to score inside the first 25 minutes.

QUOTE REMINDER #2

“I would love us to outperform the expected goals for one time, so that I would like to be called the lucky team for one time.”

— Vanni Sartini on Tuesday, they day before they scored six goals with an xG of 2.3.