Vancouver Whitecaps: Season 2, Pre Season Report

Greetings from Canada and welcome back to my Football Manager Story. This episode will bring you up to date with preparations for Season 2 in Major League Soccer with defending champions Vancouver Whitecaps. We had an amazing season last year winning the MLS Cup but now we have to strengthen to fight off the challengers.

December 2011

After the season ended the draw was made for the NACL quarter finals that will see us take on Mexican side Pumas with the first leg being played March 1st in the Estadio Olympico.

On the home front the end of the year was very quiet for us even though the rest of the league was very active in trades giving up draft slots and allocation funds for players. The front office crew and I had re-negotiated contracts with several players but there were a few hold outs for more money and they would eventually go.

At just 18 years old Russ Tiebert made a huge impact last season on the left wing and with a reliable back up in Nanchoff, selling Chiumiento to Reggina seemed a good piece of business until I received news that the MLS would get 67% of the deal as part of his sell on clause.

January 2012

Our end of year financial report was a lot healthier than the end of season bouncing back to over $4million in the bank.

 The Vancouver board offered me a contract extension which I accepted and will keep me at BC Place until the end of 2014.

The board also expect me to reach the final of the MLS Cup again this coming season.

 The first week of Janaury we signed left back Seth Sinovic from Sporting Kansas City for $100,000 and picked up Canadian youngster Joe Brown on a free from semi-professional team Forest City London (Ontario).

MLS Super Draft

The draft consisted of three rounds and 150 players but as we were defending champions we were last to pick in the first round so we watched all our short listed players go to other teams. We did need a striker and so in the first round we selected Steve Kramer out of Texas. Not quite sure if he’s first team potential but I’ll give him a good run out in the friendlies.

The second and third rounds I decided to pass on as there really wasn’t much in the way of potential by the time the selection process reached our turn. We completely passed on the supplemental draft as well.

Once the draft process was over and done with I decide to spend some of those allocation funds and brought in the following players: 

Goalkeeper: Edson

Central Defender: Yamith Cuesta

Defender/Midfield Left: Heath Pearce

Attacking Midfield Right: Erik Midtgarden

We began our pre-season campaign with a short trip to the US Virgin Islands with two comfortable wins over local sides Chelsea and UWS Gunners

February 2012

With four weeks to go until our NACL quarter-final with Pumas we returned to Canada winning two more warm up matches before losing experienced DC Jay DeMerit for up to a month with a twisted knee injury which may have a critical effect on that NACL game.

With no further activity in the transfer market we played two more friendlies to finish up the month winning both of them.

Whitecaps Squad

Here’s how things are set up broken roughly into two groups of defensive and offensive players.

Training

We’re making slow but sure progress to getting 4 star ratings in all the training categories

Fixtures

We’ll start off the new season with NACL action first before taking on Chivas and rivals Toronto FC

 Finally one last piece of news and quite an exciting one to as I was appointed Canada’s Under 23 Coach. Unfortunately there are no players in the team as all of them seem to be either in the Senior Team or the Under 20’s so I’m not sure if I have to promote the youngsters up and demote others from the first team?

Well that’s it for this update so thanks very much for reading it and I look forward to your comments.