Let there be no doubts about it. Vancouver Whitecaps wanted to win the 2012 Voyageurs Cup.
It was one of their main goals for the year and not achieving it <i>is</i> a failure.
Call it what it is.
I'm not sure the Caps will ever get a better chance of lifting the elusive silverware. You don't get it much better than the result being in our own hands and playing against a team that haven't won a league match all season.
Vancouver's hoodoo with the trophy continues, but this time around failure to win it is down to two terrible performances over the two legs of the final.
How we played is what is the worst part of all this. We showed nothing. We got what we deserved out of the games and so did Toronto.
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For a team to go in to a Cup final needing to score no matter what, only mustering a meagre four shots on goal, and none of them on target, is disgraceful. A 64% passing accuracy also says a lot about the players not being on the same page.
A lot is going to be made of fixture congestion in some quarters. Absolute nonsense as far as I'm concerned.
Four games in eleven days should not kill a large squad of fit young men. The top clubs seem to manage it throughout Europe. Sure they moan, but they manage it well on the whole.
Admittedly North America has the extra travel element, but still, other sports and sportsmen seem to do just fine. These are professional athletes. This is their job. They get paid to play a couple of games, a couple of days apart. What else do they do? And it's the same for both teams. Toronto have actually played more games than Vancouver since March.
Whether we feel they should be or not, some players certainly do look tired and jaded and need a little rest, especially in the defence.
Whilst trying to manage the busy schedule, some of Martin Rennie's line-up selections these last few games have been strange to say the least.
There's no getting away from that, but as we said in an earlier article, whatever players he picked for the games would have found fault with many fans. He was always in a no win situation, which is exactly what results he got in the three games so far.
If you look at Wednesday night's line-up, some fans would have picked that to be possibly our strongest starting eleven, with perhaps the main debate being around John Thorrington playing and Davide Chiumiento not.
It was the team I expected would take to the pitch at BMO Field. Toronto probably worked that out for themselves too.
If this is what Rennie feels is the strongest Caps line-up, then should this not have been the team that started the first leg in an attempt to bring a lead into Toronto?
It was kind of too little too late, and on the night, it was certainly too little.
I don't want to dwell too much on individual players this time because, as a team, they all failed to get the job done.
A front three of Camilo, Hassli and Le Toux simply does not work. There is no understanding and their various styles make it extremely difficult for them to be on the pitch together at the same time.
We made a big deal going in to the match that the Caps had to either look for the early goal with an attacking line up, or play the patience game and hit a tired Toronto side at the end.
The problem we have with the line-up we put out is that unfortunately it can't do either effectively.
That midfield does not allow for creative, attacking flair and setting chances up for the strikers.
Ultimately, Toronto knew how to play that particular line-up, did so extremely well and never really looked in any sort of serious trouble. The deservedly one the trophy over the two legs.
Fault for the failure lies firmly with both the Whitecaps players and the management.
Mistakes were made. Players didn't perform. I'm pretty sure Rennie and Ritchie will sit down with the group as a whole and try and talk out what went wrong and how they move forward.
And how they move forward now is vital, especially if some of these players want to remain Whitecaps past the summer.
Lenarduzzi and Rennie have hinted that there will be additions to the squad in the transfer window, so let the speculation begin as to who may come in and who may be on their way out.
There needs to be a response on the pitch from the current players. We need to see some fire in their belly and some spark. Both seemed to be missing last night.
The problem is that some players may again be rested against Portland at the weekend and I have a feeling we may see a few surprises in that particular starting eleven. Maybe we should give Martin Rennie the nickname The Tinkerer ala Claudio Ranieri.
Then the team have a mini break to rewind and refresh.
Bowing out of the national Cup competition, blowing Champions League qualification and losing a last minute leveller to one of your fiercest rivals on League duty is not the best way to go into a break. We have one final game to send us there on a slight high.
But let us not forget that we played well against Seattle (and San Jose). A good team that produced that football does not go bad overnight and we're sitting in a great playoff position as of now.
These are the easy things to forget in the doom and gloom of defeat. We are having a good season. Two Cup games should not overshadow that.
We are a much different side to last season. We win games at home and away. We play some nice football. We are an unfinished jigsaw and the task now is for the management to find those missing pieces to take us up to the next level.
One goal is gone. The other is very much a reality and will not have our full focus.
It's been interesting to see the Caps support split on what took precedence - League or Cup.
For me, winning the Voyageurs Cup should have been our primary goal this season, if not all of them.
Others see the competition as a mere irritant on the way to the playoffs and are glad to see the back of it.
It will be interesting to see how the Toronto public receive the Champions League qualifying stages if the team are still doing poorly in the League.
I don't even want to get into the rights and wrongs of both arguments just now, but both the Club and ourselves see this as an important loss in the Caps' growth and development.
It's disappointing. It hurts. But now we all need to move on. It's over and there's nothing we can do about it now.
Our sole concentration is now on the MLS playoffs. No fixture congestion come August. No weird travel plans. No burnt out players. No excuses.
All of that is great, but we have to now go out and show that losing in the Voyageurs Cup has not been for nothing.
It shouldn't be all doom and gloom. We've bowed out of one competition. We still have another huge prize to play for.
Martin Rennie has talked all year about stages of the Caps season.
Stage one is over. Stage two begins in Portland this weekend. Three points are a must.
'Mon the Caps.
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<b>AFTN 3-2-1:</b>
Hard to pick when no-one really performed, so just picking three that did something I at least noticed.
3 points - CAMILO SANVEZZO (At least he was whipping dangerous free kicks in to the box. Wouldn't have taken him off either)
2 points - JOE CANNON (like the passion he showed in those closing moments)
1 point - ALAIN ROCHAT (was doing well on the left side and getting forward. Hopefully his injury is nothing too serious)
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