Of course it's going to be tough for the Whitecaps to come into Chicago on Saturday. But it's not going to be all bad.
Vancouver just played 120 ferocious minutes against the Montreal Impact on Wednesday, of course, securing a trip to the finals of the Voyageurs Cup by the hair on their chinny chin chins. They've played both a weekday and a weekend game for two straight weeks now, and no doubt their legs are going to be a little heavy. Even with a bit of squad rotation thanks to injuries and Teitur Thordarson's prudence, the Whitecaps are going to be a little tired on this latest road swing. That's life.
The Fire have it relatively easy, getting to sit at home. They were in Colorado last Saturday but since then have had an opportunity to rest. Lucky skunks. But it's not all good news for them. They drew that game in Colorado 1-1, and the previous Saturday drew the Houston Dynamo 1-1 at home. Prior to that, they had lost three straight. The Rapids are winless in five, which is almost Whitecapsian. Meanwhile, the Whitecaps have a win and a draw against Montreal and a ferocious loss on the road to Columbus in their last three. Good games and some results mixed in there.
Obviously the Whitecaps are at a disadvantage in Chicago, but they still have a few things in their corner.
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The danger for the Whitecaps in Chicago is that they come out too conservatively. Vancouver has yet another midweek game in San Jose on Wednesday, May 11, so the temptation is obvious. But standing on the back foot means that the Whitecaps are going to give up a good chance against an eminently beatable Chicago team. The Whitecaps know this, too: in the infamous New England Revolution game where the Caps went down to nine men, Vancouver constantly played an attacking style and aside from a bad break at the end of the game would have escaped with a win.
The advantage of the turnaround is that the Whitecaps will, hopefully, have a bit of aggressive momentum coming off that Montreal game. Say what you will about the sloppy first half, the circumstances leading to the Impact penalty, or the defensive scramble late which nearly led to a winning Montreal goal, but the Whitecaps played their blood out. They handily took care of a very precocious Impact team the previous week at Stade Saputo. If they keep up that level of intensity, they may be able to take care of a Fire squad which is in no danger of playing its way into the record books.
Of course, the one thing Chicago has been able to do is score goals, and one very serious thing the Whitecaps have failed at is preventing them. Will the 120 minutes on the legs of central defenders Mouloud Akloul and Greg Janicki make life too easy for the Fire forwards? Ah, but we have the capable Michael Boxall on the bench, rested and ready to go. A bit of rotation and all of a sudden the Whitecaps are much closer to equal terms. In any case, neither Akloul nor Janicki looked too worn-down by the end of their two-hour ordeal, the last ninety seconds aside.
It's the battle between momentum and rest. Between a team that's been sitting on its laurels for a week dwelling on missed points and the team that's come out mere days earlier, fought a hell of a battle against rival, and is now ready to fight another one. The trick is that the Whitecaps have to exploit that. They have to come in with the mentality that they're there to win the game, not what we saw in Columbus where they just seemed to be trying to survive. This is a good enough team to get three points in Chicago, even now, if the soccer gods smile upon Vancouver.
So go get those three points. Or at least try like hell without using a lack of rest as an excuse. The only way to make sure the Whitecaps won't win that game is if they don't try to win it.