It was another season of up and downs for Vancouver Whitecaps. One that ended in stagnation according the club president Bobby Lenarduzzi, as the Caps failed to make a <i>stand and deliver</i> on the potential and growth from the playoff achieving year before.
Every team has their highs and their lows and the Caps were no different. The good times were like a <i>beautiful dream</i>, the bad times were <i>rough stuff</i>.
When Martin Rennie took over two years ago, the club couldn't really sink much lower than being the worst team in MLS. He brought hope and fans looked forward to having the team running like a highly tuned Ferrari, but ultimately they stalled and had <i>cartrouble</i> instead.
Not so much dandy highwaymen as begging for scraps at the top table, with crosseyed tactics leaving us looking more like Ben Turpin than Dick Turpin.
It was a year that started out with so much promise, hope and expectation.
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January brought new signings, with the two most potentially exciting coming from the Caps' two top five SuperDraft picks. It was a patience game with Kekuta Manneh, who was slowly nurtured before becoming the <i>darlin' boy</i> with some excellent performances at the end of the season. The jury is still out on Erik Hurtado, who certainly isn't a <i>goody two shoes</i> and with the terrible touch he showed most of the year, doesn't even look like a goody one shoe.
The Whitecaps also said an early farewell to another Designated Player, with Barry Robson not returning back from Scotland for pre-season training and he was soon announced as no longer being with the club.
So it was goodbye to a Scottish sour <i>puss in boots</i> and hello to Japanese playmaker Daigo Kobayashi. Sadly, he also turned out to be less than <i>wonderful</i>.
The preseason games got underway and Darren Mattocks was on fire, only this time not from a freak kitchen accident. The Jamaican scored a hat-trick in the first 15 minutes of the first match against New England, in a 4-1 win. This was going to be his year and he soon set himself the target of getting 20 goals for the season. Instead he became some sort of <i>miss thing</i>. Rumour has it that he can be found at BC Place right now trying to bag that elusive number four. Still, he did manage two more than Clint Dempsey. Bargain!
There was to be no preseason silverware this year (beating the RailHawks for a shield doesn't count). The Caps didn't go back to Florida to defend their Mickey Mouse Cup and fell at the final hurdle in the Carolina Challenge Cup in Charleston. Who knew then that this was to be a great summary of their season to come?
Just before the new season got underway, the Caps revealed their new home <i>strip</i>. Gone were the chest ladders and in were diagonal stripes from <i>navel to neck</i>.
Finally, the wait was over and the 2013 season got underway with a Canadian derby at home to Toronto. TFC were looking in disarray. Even more than they usually do. The question in the build up was whether they'd actually have enough players to put out a team. They did, just, and performed admirably, with Vancouver only running out 1-0 winners thanks to a Gershon Koffie goal.
The win was tarnished by the loss of captain Jay DeMerit to an early reoccurrence of his preseason injury. It was to be an injury that would keep him out of the team for six months and force centreback pairing after centreback pairing, as some kind of curse seemed to strike the Caps defence.
Another home win a week later, 2-1 against Columbus, seemed to set Vancouver up for a good season, but then came one of the first turning points of the season, a 2-1 loss away to Houston.
Now, not many teams were taking anything from Houston at that point but when Darren Mattocks gave the Caps a first half lead, and with Vancouver in the clear ascendency, it was looking good. Then Matchbox Twenty missed a great chance to put the Caps two up, Houston scored two quick goals and the first defeat of the season was in the books.
That loss signalled the start of a horrible seven match unbeaten run for Vancouver in MLS and it was starting to look like a case of the terrible twos for Martin Rennie.
The highlight in that poor run was the game in San Jose where the Caps came back to earn a draw thanks to some horrible boot changing decision making by two veteran Earthquakes and Nigel Reo-Coker showing that he can be a right (legally) <i>dirty beast</i> with a tackle that sent Sam Cronin up in to space as if he was on <i>Apollo 9</i>.
It soon became apparent that the weak link in the team was the midfield. They were posted missing in action far too often and not stamping their authority on games. We love to see some <i>hard men, tough blokes</i> in the middle, but we know we also need some creative flair. We really didn't get either.
The Caps did get two non MLS wins amidst that seven match run, beating Edmonton twice on the way to another Voyageurs Cup final. They were made to work hard for their away win and had a lot of luck along the way, unfortunately seeming to use it all up in those games.
The MLS winless streak was finally snapped in some style, with the Caps first ever win over LA Galaxy on League business. It was a coming of age party for Russell Teibert, who grabbed the first two goals in a 3-1 win. His first strikes as a senior Whitecap.
The Whitecaps were going for three firsts. The first one was in the bag, just a Voyageurs Cup win and a MLS Cascadia derby win to complete a trifecta that never came.
A 0-0 first leg Cup draw in <i>Montreal</i>, got people excited, as did an amazing game against Portland at BC Place a few days later, where the Caps would have got their first derby win if it hadn't have been for an amazing Hail Mary touchdown catch by Jose Valencia to earn the Timbers an unlikely point. Look how valuable that proved for them and how costly for us.
The first major disappointment of the season came on May 29th. The Impact came to town and snatched the Voyageurs Cup right out of Vancouver's hands with a Hassoun Camara goal six minutes from time giving the wannabe, not so <i>young Parisians</i> the trophy on away goals.
It was gut wrenching and made all the worse because the goal came from removing a man on the post. Argh, Brad <i>baby, let me scream at you</i> for letting that happen.
The pressure was now on Rennie and the writing was starting to look on the walls. Some fans wanted him out there and then, others wanted to give him till the end of June, whilst others still wanted to give him till the end of the season.
Rumours swirled that the executive weren't happy and had given him one final drink at the last chance saloon that was the wild West Conference. Could he turn the Caps fortunes around and make them <i>kings of the wild frontier</i>?
To his credit, he said, no, you will not <i>feed me to the lions</i>, and the team finally started to <i>kick</i> into gear, starting with an uncharacteristic, and somewhat <i>alien</i>, attacking display away to New York that ended with a 2-1 win and the circling vultures went to find some other prey for a little bit.
An unlikely goalscorer came in the form of Jordan Harvey and his performance helped pave the way for one of the most contentious decisions of the season - the trading of Alain Rochat to DC United for the draft equivalent of a bag of half deflated balls.
Some cried <i>bullshit</i>, but Harvey's initial form, especially in the attack showed it to be the right decision. Looking like an extra from a Johnny Depp pirate movie, Harvey hoisted the <i>Jolly Roger</i>, turned on some swashbuckling style and grabbed three goals in the month of June. He would finish the season with a career best four. One more than Darren Mattocks.
The first game of the season against Seattle was next up in June and it was wild ride down at the Clink. Despite going an early goal down, the Caps attack exploded in to life and Camilo's brace saw the Caps take the lead and looking good for winning their first ever Cascadia derby in MLS. Then down went Andy O'Brien to injury on the crappy temporary grass pitch. With the Caps in the middle of a centreback injury crisis, on came Greg Klazura, Jordan Harvey moved into the centre of the defence, and the Caps imploded, losing two goals and the game. <i>That Voodoo</i> doll that some Sounders fan was using worked to perfection.
But the displays on either coast gave Vancouver some much needed confidence and self belief and with the front three of Camilo, Miller and Teibert banging in goals and assists left, right and centre, the Caps went on a run of five wins and a draw in the next six games.
They moved up the standings rapidly and all the <i>table talk</i> wasn't so much about whether they could keep it up, but who could stop them? There was even chatter, albeit slight and whispered, about being in contention for the Supporters' Shield.
Was that possible? Well, there is always <i>room at the top</i>, don't let them tell you that there is not. The Whitecaps were contenders. Brief ones.
It wasn't to last.
All the good work of June was soon to be undone with another Whitecaps second half season collapse. It was looking a carbon copy of 2012 all over again, as if someone had put the club through a <i>zerox</i> machine.
The Caps had been making a big play on social media about the unbeaten home record. It was asking for trouble and it came in the form of Jun Marques Davidson's forehead.
His early sending off in the July 27th game against Philadelphia for a headbutt can be pinpointed as another one of the turning points of the season. The Caps went down to a 1-0 defeat and they were no longer a <i>killer in the home</i> arena.
They would go on to lose another two games on home turf, dropping 19 points at home altogether and taking 63% of the points available at BC Place. That's <i>gotta be a sin</i>.
Vancouver soon found themselves on a slippery slope, both at home and away. The Caps took just six points from a nine game spell. Whatever Rennie had been looking for, his <i>nine plan failed</i> and the team even suffered the ignominy of going two down to Chivas before fighting back for a home draw. Another costly game and definitely one of the games you can pin a playoff missing season on.
Even a change of goalkeeper didn't help. David Ousted had been brought in as the only addition during the summer transfer window. The club is obviously not <i>made of money</i>, but for a squad that was clearly not deep enough to make a decent playoff run, this was a shocking decision and one which ultimately cost the club and Rennie.
Had Brad Knighton done enough to be dropped? Was Ousted better? Did the Caps feel they had to play him because they'd brought him in? You <i>can't set rules about glove</i>, so who really knows?
A three game road trip at the start of September was looking to be key. After a loss to Dallas and a scoreless draw in San Jose, it wasn't looking hopeful.
The situation looked <i>desperate, but not serious</i> if you listened to Rennie. His chats with the media had more spin that a cue ball in a trick shot. Publically, everything was fine. Nothing to worry about. The team was good, they'd get the job done.
You have to think that behind the scenes he couldn't have been that full of confidence. He'd been saying such things all year, but apart from that small burst of form in late spring we just hadn't seen the actual evidence that this was the case.
Was he right or was it a case of <i>never trust a man with egg on his face</i>? Most were starting to tire of hearing it. We <i>won't take that talk</i> they started to say.
But just when it was looking all over, Vancouver went and got a stunning 3-0 win in Montreal.
They were back in the hunt, only to blow it big time the following week with an unforgiveable 1-0 loss at home to a Real Salt Lake B team that had one eye on the US Open Cup final the following week. All around it was a case of <i>anger inc</i>.
Certainly some of the senior players seemed to realise the gravity of the situation, with Nigel Reo-Coker seemingly questioning the team's tactics and system after the loss, but later brushing it off. That wasn't <i>the idea</i> of his comments, he said, he was merely praising the opposition.
Whatever he was doing, the general assumption was what most people were thinking.
With four games of the season remaining, back to back Cascadian derbies were next up and in one of the most exciting spells of football seen so far at BC Place, Vancouver and Portland battled back and forth to a 2-2 draw.
It was a good game but wins were what Vancouver were needing and finding one wasn't going to come easy down in Seattle.
With Kenny Miller injured, Rennie was forced to put in Kekuta Manneh. Just go in and <i>play boy</i>, he must have said. And the 18 year old Gambian did just that, hitting a stunning hat trick on the way to a 4-1 Whitecaps victory.
Playoff hopes were raised ever so slightly once again but everyone knew it was a really hard task ahead of them and the weeks to do it in were starting to <i>shrink</i>.
There was also still some hope for the Cascadia Cup. Vancouver needed Portland to beat Seattle for the Caps to win the trophy. But would the Timbers be a <i>friend or foe</i>?. As it turned out, a friend, and the Whitecaps won their first Cascadia Cup since 2008.
Scant consolation really for not achieving either the playoffs or the Voyageurs Cup.
It was a shaping up to be a rollercoaster end to the season, as the Whitecaps looked to <i>stay in the game</i>, but it actually turned out to be a <i>very short ride</i>.
The Western Conference had been tight all season. It was <i>dog eat dog</i> from start to finish. The Whitecaps had at least given themselves a shot. They just needed two wins against Colorado, but fell at the first hurdle.
Despite taking the lead and fighting back to level, Vancouver blew their chance thanks to one of the pitfalls that haunted them all season, poor defending.
The 3-2 defeat signalled the end of the Caps' playoff hopes. They would no longer be one of the big <i>five guns west</i> and finished 7th, three points off a playoff place.
All that was left was the last game of the season and the Caps went out in style with a Camilo hat trick giving Vancouver a 3-0 win over Colorado and sending the Brazilian home with the MLS Golden Boot.
A fantastic ending to a disappointing season.
There had at least been some other highs in October, with Marco Bustos, Marco Carducci, Matthew Chow, Kianz Froese and Jordan Haynes all heading off from the Whitecaps Residency to represent Canada at the U17 World Cup in the UAE.
<i>The Magnificent Five</i> did themselves, their country, their club and all of us watching proud. Bright lights going forward and much promise for the Caps' future.
But it will be a future without Martin Rennie.
His failure to achieve the playoffs and show satisfactory growth and development of the array of young talent at his disposal cost him his job two days after the Whitecaps season came to an end.
With Rennie's dismissal, the Caps are now left looking for their <i>Prince Charming</i>.
They may have painted themselves into a corner by emphasising the need for an experienced boss. Will they risk losing face by going back on that and appointing from within with Carl Robinson? It would be a backtrack and some people would mock them for that, but <i>ridicule is nothing to be scared of</i> if they end up with the right person in charge.
The search is underway and the 2014 season feels so far away. Who ever gets the job in the end, let's just hope he's capable of <i>making history</i>.
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<i>[Following on from our previous Charles Dickens themed season review and Meat Loaf themed Voyageurs Cup preview, we've moved on to one of my childhood musical heroes with this Adam Ant themed 2013 Vancouver Whitecaps year in review. Just because. How much Antmusic did you spot? There's 46 Ants and solo song titles in there!]</i>
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