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  • Mauro Rosales signing will certainly assist Whitecaps


    Michael Mccoll

    Gone is a player on the outside of the Whitecaps squad looking in. A player struggling to get any meaningful minutes after the form of some excellent young talent. And a player who looked a shadow of his former self and the form that impressed many last season.

    In his place is a player that has impressed me a lot these past few seasons. A player who has the second most assists in Major League Soccer since he moved here in 2011. And a player who now adds an exciting, creative and dangerous dimension on the wing for the Whitecaps.

    All in all, a pretty impressive trade by Vancouver.

    They are picking up a player who was DP at Chivas, but only earning $3500 more than Reo-Coker while producing a hell of a lot more bang for his buck. He also counts as a domestic, freeing up an international spot for the Caps.

    Now some may scoff at the Whitecaps adding a 33-year-old, and one who I tweeted out on Saturday looks like he's had a tough paper round. It doesn't exactly fit in with Carl Robinson's youth oriented squad and his plan of adding players with an eye to the future. But you have to feel that there's still a lot of running in Rosales' tank, if he can stay healthy.

    And that is a slight worry. Rosales has had injury concerns of late and his ageing body, or more precisely his ankles, took a battering playing on the turf in Seattle. Playing on an arguably worse surface at BC Place may take it's toll and maybe we will find him used a little more sparingly at home than away.

    But it's certainly worth the gamble. For the prospect of what Rosales can add to this Whitecaps team is exciting and the partnership he could form with Pedro Morales is simply mouthwatering.

    We've been crying out for a winger for months and now we've got one. It's been no secret that the Whitecaps have been struggling to find the decisive wingman who can actually get past the opposition defence and put in the telling ball in to the box or even finish it off themselves.

    Rosales provides that. He has 12 goals and a staggering 42 assists in his 107 MLS appearances these past four seasons. And he strikes a pretty mean free kick too, which the Whitecaps have been somewhat lacking since Camilo left.

    And if people feel that Rosales' best days are perhaps behind him, then you only have to look at what he's done with a fairly struggling Chivas team this year. His eight assists this season are the joint third highest in MLS and you have to give him a lot of the credit for the goal tally of Erick Torres. No goals yet this year for himself, but you can't have everything!

    So that's 17 assists combined this season for Rosales and Morales and now we have both of them here in Vancouver. That is a big game changer when it comes to the playoff race.

    I'd argued that the Whitecaps needed those final couple of pieces to go from an exciting team on the verge of the playoffs to serious contenders. Rosales could very well be one of those pieces and Robinson has already described him as a "difference maker". You don't want to put too much expectations on a player but he has delivered in his four year in MLS to date and there is no reason to believe that that is now going to suddenly change, and especially not with some of the exciting talent he now finds himself surrounded by.

    With Vancouver's defence seemingly shored up and riding a three game clean sheet streak, the Whitecaps midfield now looks a pretty formidable proposition with Matias Laba, Gershon Koffie, Russell Teibert, Sebastian Fernandez and of course the maestro Morales.

    Can the Caps' strikers finally start to convert the even bigger multitude of chances that are going to be created for them or will Vancouver be producing some of the most exciting 0-0 draws ever seen?

    We should get the first idea of that on Saturday.



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