Costa Rican website La Nacion Sports broke the news on Sunday that Waston was heading to Vancouver after his team, CD Saprissa, lost their Tournament Cup semi final match. It should be noted that there has been no official confirmation yet that he's coming to Vancouver, but he certainly looks to be heading to MLS.
Saprissa coach Ronald Gonzalez confirmed Waston's departure after the game when he told reporters, "Unfortunately, today was the last game of Kendall with us, but it's a good opportunity for him and his family.". Some of Waston's teammates also appear to have confirmed the move on Twitter.
If you've listened to any of our recent AFTN podcasts then you'll know my feeling that I don't see the current Whitecaps' squad being good enough to take the team to the playoffs.
For me, we need three key pieces. A solid central defender, a creative and goalscoring left winger, and an experienced striker with a goalscoring record of actually finishing chances presented to him.
The signing of Waston would at least tick one of the boxes.
With Jay DeMerit's retiral, the current first choice backline of Carlyle Mitchell and Johnny Leveron has been a bit harem scarem at times and not ideally the pairing to continue going forward with long term. Andy O'Brien, remains class, and our first choice to start but this is likely to be the Irishman's final season of playing here. Christian Dean is close to being ready to play but has badly needed some playing minutes this year to continue his development but they have simply not come.
Waston is a 6 foot 5 inch central defender, who is good in the air in both boxes and has goals to his name, something which the current crop of Caps' centrebacks have consistently failed to provide.
He has been plying his trade of late with Costa Rican Primera Division side Deportivo Saprissa. Waston has been with the Purple Monster since 2009, including some loan spells with fellow Primera side Perez Zeledon, and he has had spells in Uruguay and Puerto Rico.
Waston has been capped by the Ticos at various levels, including 2 caps for the senior team. Waston was also on Costa Rica's preliminary squad for the World Cup in Brazil but just failed to make the final cut.
It's kind of hard to get full stats for the guy but according to this site, Waston has 26 goals from 116 appearances since 2007/08. Not a bad record for a central defender, although we have seen it mentioned that he can also play striker. So maybe a double whammy?!
Looks like another shrewd addition by Carl Robinson. Let's just hope there's a finisher on the way as well. Then the faltering Whitecaps may start to look like getting back on track.
Here's Waston in some action:
[We want to give a shout out to Dave Hall for first tweeting out the newspaper story]