Let's face it, the Vancouver Whitecaps are a rough team.
We already had long-team League Two ruffian Terry Dunfield as one of our core players. John Thorrington is also renowned for rough play on those rare occasions when he's healthy, giving us a pretty deadly midfield in every sense. Alexandre Morfaw "takes care of business" coming off the bench. At the back, Michael Boxall and Jay DeMerit aren't afraid to stretch the limits of the laws, and up front, well, as we've seen Eric Hassli certainly isn't afraid to get angry.
This thrills me, of course. I like a bit of dirty play. One of last year's Whitecaps' minor problems was that they were pushed around too easily. With a core of small players who didn't stick up for themselves, opposing teams sometimes had a bit of an easy time with us. Made up for in spades this time around, and since we've now signed Kevin Harmse the roster has grown even harder. Grrr, it's enough to make the testosterone boil in my veins. Let's go out and tackle somebody until their leg goes backwards!
But the aforementioned Hassli also provides us with a cautionary tale. Major League Soccer is an erratic league in many ways and refereeing is not the least. Physical play is excellent when it's intimidating enemy forwards and breaking open their defensive line. It's terrible when your best forward is being sent off for tackles that wouldn't have helped the team even if he hadn't been caught.
Call it a bit of navel-gazing, but I find myself wondering: might one of the Whitecaps' real strengths become a weakness?
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Even bearing in mind the perfidiousness of the referees, the Whitecaps are well-advised to play with a bit of an edge. They have some skill but not even I will argue they're one of the most talented teams in the league. Moreover, they have a higher-than-average number of truly soft, finesse-first players and guys without any experience in professional North American soccer who will need, if not exactly <i>protection</i>, at least <i>consideration</i>. The Whitecaps have a number of rough and tumble players and it would be rash to ask them all to play entirely within themselves.
Moreover, and let's be blunt here, playing rough can work. That's why I like it. Many of MLS's top players aren't the most courageous souls and will avoid trouble if they think there might be a hard challenge on the end of it. It can fire up the crowd, it can snuff attacks out in their tracks. There's a reason slower or less talented players are the quickest to embrace rough play: it's the great equalizer. To quote legendary Canadian national team defender Mark Watson, "they don't run so fast when they're lying on the ground." My tentative encouragement of borderline-dirty play isn't sheer bloodlust; it's an acknowledgement that a certain level of physicality is both legal and accepted in soccer and that it can be a great way for less talented players to keep up with their more skilled counterparts.
Still, you can see the reason for my concern. Both Vancouver and Philadelphia skirted the edge in their game on Saturday but, ultimately, Vancouver came out worse in the referee's book. That's just going to happen in this league. Boisterous home crowds influencing the man with the cards; when 20,000 shouting partisans are on one side it turns out you <i>can</i> fight the laws. Early on, the Whitecaps are dealing with enough manpower shortages due to injuries and international callups; we don't need to see a host of our players being suspended as well.
The news isn't terribly grim. Terry Dunfield, to pick a name, has kept his spikes firmly pointed downward so far this season. Apart from one frankly horrifying tackle in the second half of a Supporters' Summit game against Portland, I've hardly seen Dunfield do anything even borderline. What this has meant is that Dunfield's been distributing the ball, playing defensively, scoring a goal, and doing all the other things Terry Dunfield does so well without getting sent off. A player like John Thorrington may play on the edge but he might actually be better off calming down: he's quite a skilled player and given his serious injury concerns in recent seasons, it's probably a good idea that he spend more time playing clean and avoiding contact when possible.
The team, essentially, has to learn to keep their tempers under control. That's the mistake Eric Hassli made against the Union and a few other Whitecaps came close. They have to learn when the referee is looking for an excuse to send somebody off, and when he's either put the whistle in his pocket or been convinced by the Empire Field crowd that nothing a Whitecap does could ever possibly be a foul. As I've harped on with this team, it's a matter of experience. But it's experience that can be hard to find; Kevin Harmse never quite got the knack, to pick a relevant name. The mood of a referee is sometimes far easier to see in the stands, with a big picture of every so-called offense, than it is on the field.
They have to corral their instincts. Atiba Harris was taking a vicious beating from the Union defenders with no fouls called almost the entire game long. That can't have helped the Whitecaps' mood and it's only natural that a few more aggressive players might seek retribution. But there's a time and a place for it and on the road in a 0-0 game with an edgy referee is neither. At times it looked like the Whitecaps might go down to <i>nine</i> men. Their spirit did them credit but their intelligence didn't for the first hour. Luckily, after Hassli's sending off, the team did find their composure, although it was too late to prevent the loss of their finest striker. It's a very difficult thing to do week in, week out.
But it's a skill the team has to learn, or else Hassli's suspension may just be the start.