<center><i>“Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph;
a beginning, a struggle and a victory.”</center>
<p align=right>- Mahatma Ghandi -</i></p>
For Martin Rennie, this 2012 MLS season is one of stages.
If you've spent any time chatting with, listening to or reading about the Caps Head Coach this year, you'll have heard him talk a lot about that. It's been quite the recurring mantra from the start, and a refreshing one at that.
No outlandish claims of domestic or world domination. Just take things slowly, don't run before you can walk, and build steadily towards that final goal.
The Club are setting a series of goals of where they want to be at different points of the season and on the whole, it's working, even if everything isn't quite being achieved.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
The Vancouver Whitecaps are still very much a work in progress, but they are unrecognisable from the team that had such a challenging inaugural season, both on and off the pitch.
May has been a busy, difficult, and not exactly a fruitful month for Vancouver.
Having meekly lost the Voyageurs Cup final last Wednesday, Saturday's game in Portland was the chance to focus on what the Whitecaps do have left to play for during the rest of this season - making the MLS playoffs.
It was also the last game before a two week break.
Having been unsuccessful in their quest for winning the Canadian Championship, was Saturday's game the end of stage one of this 2012 season, or the start of stage two?
We asked Martin Rennie after the match on Saturday evening:
<i>"End of stage one I think.
We all need a break after a very long stage one and especially as the last phase of stage one was a tough, tough run for us.
We finished that first little period with a lot of positives, a lot to build on, then we go into a month where we play three home games and one game on the west coast away from home in one full month.
So that gives us a chance to recharge our batteries and really get ready for those games and hopefully give our best and get some more points."</i>
June may be a favourable one for the Caps but they will certainly need to make the most of the reduced travel as July is going to be a killer. Seven games and five of them away from home, including four in a row to kick off the month.
So what can Whitecaps fans expect to see in stage two of the season?
There's going to be some crunch games, especially in August when all four matches played will be against our Western Conference playoff rivals. Five of the seven games played in July are also intra-conference affairs.
Every point dropped against our Western rivals in the next three months could prove to be crucial. There's only four games against Eastern teams in the next fifteen matches.
This stage of the season will truly be the test as to how far the Caps have come under Martin Rennie and whether they are the genuine playoff contenders we believe them to be.
There will be some new personnel to help out.
Barry Robson will start training with the Caps next month, ready to play his first matches in July.
The Caps have a void that the Scotsman will bring the tools to fill and will bolster what has been seen to be a big gap in recent games.
From what both Rennie and Lenarduzzi have indicated in recent weeks, Robson's addition is not going to be the only one we're likely to see in Vancouver once the transfer window opens.
Carlos Bocanegra is still heavily linked with the Caps and with Rangers still being in financial peril, there is a good chance that the American may just decide to head home to MLS and actually get paid what he's meant to be getting paid.
An all-American international centre back partnership of Bocanegra and DeMerit, along with Lee and Rochat as full backs, would give the Caps one of the best, if not the best, backlines in all of MLS.
There's also been murmurings about bringing in another defensive midfielder and the whole midfield depth could do with a little boost and addition.
All of this can only mean that some players will be moving on once the window opens.
I'm expecting to see players like Michael Boxall, Atiba Harris and Long Tan depart. They're not figuring in the first team plans, so it would be best for all parties if they sought pastures new.
Could we also be set to lose players like Jordan Harvey and John Thorrington? And where does all this leave Russell Teibert, who needs to play or his development will start going backwards? Is there a place for Davide Chiumiento, or will he be seen as our biggest trade bait?
The other big question is whether we will keep all three of Eric Hassli, Camilo and Sebastien Le Toux.
The three of them can't seem to play together in the same team and we now have Darren Mattocks, Omar Salgado and Etienne Barbara banging on the door as the new guys in town.
It's going to be interesting.
Martin Rennie and his management team are going to have some difficult decisions to make. They won't all be pleasing to the fanbase, but you can be sure that they're going to be done for the right reasons.
We've grown so much from last year, but we can't afford to now stand still. There does need to be some changes if this growth is to continue.
Of all the stages of this season, stage two is probably the most important, for it is this one that will really shape where we'll be come November.
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