Whitecaps raise the curtain on a new season
Posted March 6, 2016 9:39 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – The Vancouver Whitecaps open a new MLS season Sunday afternoon at BC Place against the Montreal Impact. (2:30pm)
Expectations are high for a Whitecaps club that saw its season end at the hands of the Portland Timbers – after the bar was set for regular season point total, and a Canadian Championship.
Vancouver’s braintrust wanted to address the team’s offensive attack in the offseason, and they hope to have done that with the acquisitions of two strikers – Masato Kudo out of Japan, and Blas Perez from Panama.
With those two in the mix, that should allow Octavio Rivero a bit more room to operate. Rivero’s ten goals led the team last season.
And while preseason results don’t matter too much, the Whitecaps did post a mark of 5-1-0.
Vancouver also posted a home record of 9-6-2 last season, but it was their mark on the road that really helped the group to 2nd place in the Western conference.
Manager Carl Robinson is hoping his team can ramp up their quality of play in front of their supporters this season.
“We were excellent on the road last year, and decent at home.” Robinson said earlier this week.
“I want to be excellent at home and excellent away, but (all) 20 managers are looking for that, and trying to find a way to do that.”
A better mark at home sounds like one of the organizational mandates, as team President Bob Lenarduzzi echoed the same sentiment to NEWS 1130 on Friday.
“I think if we’d had a better home record, we would have been challenging for the Supporters Shield. Ironically enough, in the previous four MLS years, we had a fairly good home record in each of those seasons. Last year, it was the opposite. We could have done with two or three more wins at home.”
Lenarduzzi also knows the expectations for the team are as high as they’ve ever been.
“If we want to continue to evolve as a club, we have to be striving for having the best possible season we can. We’ve added some players in the offseason that ideally, will address the goal scoring deficiencies that we had at times. They (Kudo, Perez) should help in that regard.”
Vancouver will take to the road after Sunday with matches in Kansas City on March 12th, and Century Link Field in Seattle against the Sounders on March 19th in the first Cascadia clash of the season.
