Kevin’s New 2012 Football Manager Story

“Across the flat land of The Prairies, through the majestic Rocky Mountains, following the banks of the Frasier River we eventually find ourselves on the shores of the Pacific. Under the shadow of Grouse Mountain at 777 Pacific Blvd we arrive at a modern Coliseum in the form of BC Place where battles with the ball will unfold in Major League Soccer.” “Welcome to the Vancouver Whitecaps and my brand new 2012 Football Manager Story”

In terms of game play I have 5 leagues set up to begin with and these maybe adjusted along the way.

My objectives are two-fold for Vancouver. First and most foremost is foundational, that is to build the team up over the next couple of seasons or so, and secondly mount a serious challenge for the play-offs and perhaps a shot at the MLS Cup. Champions League action would hopefully be a bi-product of any success.

In real life I have dual citizenship so I’ve selected myself as Canadian for this story which hopefully will lead to my ultimate goal that being appointed as Canadian National Coach and taking Team Canada to the World Cup. Note I said take and not win The World Cup.

The Whitecaps are a brand new team to the MLS and play their home games at the beautifully refurbished BC Place right in the heart of downtown Vancouver.

Inside the stadium

The team is sponsored by Bell Canada, the largest phone company in the country and when at home we wear white uniforms and dark ones when playing on the road. In terms of rivals it has to be Seattle who are just a couple of hours south in Washington State and of course Toronto FC.

Tactically Vancouver will line up in a 4-3-3- formation as this seems best for the players that are currently available. I’ll be playing a single striker up front, a big old Target Man as we have two in the squad already and as you will see below I’ve added a third. There’s a maximum of 30 players allowed in the squad and we current have 27 so there not much room for new players. Twenty-four of these are non-Canadian and I’m allowed up to 27. Of the total squad there’s a maximum of 10 international players allowed of which I have eight. Okay, already complicated!

In terms of transfers I wanted to keep thing simple for the first season so I did not release any players on arriving at the club and just filled the spots that I felt needed attending to bringing in one Canadian and two Brazilians. Before the first pre-season friendly I had my squad in place

1. Defensive Midfielder – Tyler Hemming

2. BBM Midfielder — Edinho

3. Target Man — Arthuro

**I’ll do screen shots of the other players as the need arises rather than show you all thirty of them.

Immediately on arrival I did shake up the backroom staff (based on Johnny’s guide) releasing several coaches and quickly replaced them with better ones, though that will remain to be seen.

Backroom Staff

In bringing in three new players I had made somewhat of a basic error in not paying attention to the salary cap of $53,056 which meant come squad registration time three players had to be waived and thus bringing my squad back to 27 players. Not quite the end of the world as there was a couple of not so talented players in the squad, but I was slightly annoyed at myself nonetheless.

March (2011) began with the MLS draft and we had the #4 pick in the first round. Passing on this would mean losing our option for the second round also. Our pick was former DC United central defender Devon McTavish whose salary just kept us under the cap and also abided with all the other squad rules as well.

Following the draft we then had two more pre-season games and this is how we faired in all of them. It was a very satisfying run of results but keeping in mind the matches were against much weaker teams except perhaps Rochester.

The best performance during this time was by AMR Shea Salinas who had a rating of 7.35 and chipped in with three goals as well.

Our finances are very healthy indeed with over $9 million in the bank and I never spent a penny of the $227,000 transfer budget.

What about season expectations? I was never asked by the board which is kind of strange? Perhaps as we are a brand new team to the league the board as now idea themselves what to expect! There’s no relegation of course in the MLS though I can hopefully avoid being the last team in the league just out of pride.

We will start off our inaugural season at home playing none other than Toronto FC so Canadian bragging rights are immediately at stake!

That completes my prelimiary Vancouver Whtiecaps report which going forward will basically be in 2 month updates plus a Playoff Special if and when we reach that point. I’m very excited by the journey ahead of me and I really hope I can achieve my Team Canada objective but that’s some way off in the distance.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and as with my previous Plymouth story  I do appreciate all your support and look forward to your comments.

Regards,

Kevin