Latest Signings Leave Three Available Spots In Whitecaps Squad

Vancouver Whitecaps announced today that Russell Teibert, Alex Morfaw, Camilo da Silva Sanvezzo and Michael Boxall have all been signed by the Club for the Major League Soccer season ahead.

The four signings take the current squad to 27 players, three shy of the maximum 30 allowed. Interestingly, at least to me, 12 of these players were with the Caps last season in their last year in USSF-D2.

One of these, of course, is Russell Teibert.

The addition of Teibert won’t be a surprise to anybody as he has been outstanding in both the pre-season games. In the game against Seattle at Starfire in particular, he showed so much pace and skill to show that even at just 18 years old, he will be a real handful for MLS defences league-wide.

One of his biggest admirers is Bobby Lenarduzzi.

“He has had a great pre-season” explained Lenarduzzi at a press conference this morning, where he went on to describe the Niagara Falls native as a “model young professional”.

“This kid has been unbelievable. He was injured for most of last season, could have easily been down on his luck and feeling sorry for himself, but he didn’t do that. He got his head down.

And from the time pre-season started, and our first game against Real Salt Lake, he scored the first goal and he’s gotten better and better ever since, to the point where, although it’s not confirmed, it looks like he’s got a good chance of starting on the weekend”.

Teibert has been in the Whitecaps residency program for the last two years and it’s a great reward for all the hard work undertaken by the guys that run that initiative.

I’m particularly pleased to see both Camilo (as he’s going to be known by the Caps) and Alex Morfaw get offered MLS contracts. Both have impressed me no end pre-season.

Morfaw’s tough tackling and general midfield presence will be a great addition. I know we had some debate on the blog over the weekend around my view that I’d like to see him as a starter but I do feel that if he keeps up the development he has shown so far, he definitely has the skills to finish the season as one.

As we also commented on the weekend, the potential striking partnership that Camilo da Silva Sanvezzo and Eric Hassli could form together, is very exciting. They both have pace and immense ball control and I can see Hassli’s physical presence setting up many chances for the young Brazilian.

I also get to air my Camilo song again that was too confusing for the more drunked Southsiders down in Tukwila!

I’m still not totally won over on the Kiwi Boxall. He’s obviously got the skills in his locker, you don’t get to be an internationalist at any level without that, but he seemed a bit shaky at times pre-season. It will be interesting to see how he develops though with more experienced heads around him and hopefully he doesn’t end up away on international duty too often.

There are four players from the pre-season camp who have not currently been offered contracts.

Fan favourite, Mouloud Akloul, is expected to officially sign once he can overcome his injury. Whether this will be in one of the remaining three spots, or to replace another player who may leave or go to the residency squad is still open to debate.

I wouldn’t expect any of the other three, Cornelius Stewart, Bedri Gashi and Kevin Harmes, to make the jump. None of them really impressed me enough in the brief glimpses I saw of them pre-season, and of what I knew of them before, to merit a MLS contract with the Caps as it stands.

There’s still time to add some names before the transfer window closes on April 16th. Then the end of the European season will see the rumour mill go into overdrive as I’m sure we’ll be linked with a seemingly endless string of players wanting to make the move across the Atlantic. Will we even see a second or third designated player come to the team?

As it stands, I’m very happy with the current squad. I love the youthful aspect of it and the fact that we can keep a number of these guys together as a unit for a long time to come.

I’ve seen enough pre-season to be genuinely excited about what this team can do this year.

Two more sleeps and we start to find out.

Whitecaps Football Shorts # 3

It was great to see action from the Whitecaps pre-season match up against the LA Galaxy in Arizona yesterday. Just another thing to get us excited about the upcoming season.

Despite the 2-0 loss, it was good to see the highlights from the game and the Caps wearing my preferred all blue strip. It looks smart. The choice of music over the highlights leaves a lot to be desired though. What’s wrong with natural noise?

There were certainly some positives to be taken from the game. We’re creating chances, which is good, and we seem to have a couple of pretty commanding midfield maestros stepping up to the plate. We’re looking pretty assured on the ball in the middle and it was nice to see us stroking the ball about all over the pitch and not just playing aimless long balls.

Some pretty robust tackles out there too. Surprising to see, but nice at the same time.

For anyone who hasn’t seen the action yet, here ya go…

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We had enough chances to sink the Laggies two or three times over yesterday. Come real time action, we can’t afford to do that.

Just over three weeks away and we still have no one that looks like they’ll be doing the business in front of the goal on a regular basis. Starting to get more than just worrying.

Although today’s Countdown To Kickoff video, “Just Imagine” seems to be showcasing our two new strikers. They seem to have problems actually getting the ball into the net as well though.

We should release a spoof version of it. “Just Imagine if we had a goalscorer”

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I’m really liking the MLS 101 series on the official Caps website. Great not just for new fans, but also people like myself who have never had that much interest in Major League Soccer and are frankly baffled by the number of seemingly nonsensical rules that they have governing the League.

Yesterday’s piece on Designated Players covered a lot of good points.

I personally don’t care if the Caps sign a big name DP or not. As we’ve said countless times before, all we want is the right player to fit the team and drive us on to success. A showy big name may attract some but if that’s what they need to feet off their ass and support the team then that’s not the kind of fans we need.

When the Caps start of an article by saying “No club in Major League Soccer have won a title with a Designated Player in their side” I’m guessing we’re not likely to be seeing on in a Whitecaps jersey any time soon.

No big deal to me and if others think that if we don’t have then we’re a lesser team for it, then it’s up to Teitur and the guys we do have to prove otherwise.

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We mentioned on Sunday how much we loved the Whitecaps “Forever Fans” video as part of their Countdown ‘Til Kickoff campaign.

Part of the extended footage video featured John and Pat Titos talking about how their daughter Cyndi used to draw pictures of the players. From what we saw in their scrapbook, these pictures were amazing.

Thanks to AFTN reader and Southsider, SoccerSue, we can now bring you another one of Cyndi’s wonderful pieces of artwork:

Cyndi and Sue go back to before the 86ers days and this photo shows Cyndi presenting Steve Kindel a picture she did of him at a supporters club awards banquet.

Thanks Sue. Great to see and who knows, we may bring you some more down the line.

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Our #shootjoecannonoutofacannon campaign has been gathering steam!

A lot of people have been getting behind it and a huge thanks to the Southsiders, especially Piltdownman, for keeping it alive on Twitter.

On Friday, the human cannonball, Joe Cannon himself, tweeted:

@JoeCannon1love : If we can get 10,000 people to tweet it, I would seriously have to consider shooting out of a Cannon!! #shootjoecannonoutofacannon

Fucking awesome!!! That’s the spirit Joe. So you all know what you need to get online and start doing now.

This will happen! We’re even working on a mini site for the whole thing. Unfortunately having a life has gotten in the way, but hey, we’ll work through that!

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Finally, I’m going to be one of the guests on It’s Called Football tonight to discuss Whitecaps ticketing issues.

I’ve had a lot of people get in touch with me since yesterday’s article regarding ticketing problems and I’ll try and cover some of those on the show tonight.

You can listen and watch the live podcast from 7pm PST HERE or listen in to it any time after the event.

Whitecaps Football Shorts # 2

We hadn’t planned to have another ‘Football Shorts’ round up so soon but it’s been helluva busy couple of days! So we’ll shelf our usual ‘Friday Fun’ section for this week.

First off, we’re not sure about the name of the section any more. Do you like Whitecaps Football Shorts or what else could we have for a snappy round up of news and events? Leave your suggestions in the comments below…

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After all the off the field shenanigans we’ve had recently, it’s been nice to get excited about some on field happenings and it looks like we may have a striker. Maybe even more than one!

The Caps confirmed yesterday that Brazilian striker Camilo da Silva Sanvezzo is trialling with the team down in Arizona this weekend. Camilo is a 22 year old who already has a prolific track record, albeit not at that high a level of the game.

Starting his career with Brazilian Corinthians Alagoano’s famous youth squad. He moved to Malta for the 2009/10 season to join Qormi in the Maltese Premier League. His 24 goals in 22 appearances, including two hat-tricks, helped the club to third place, just missing out on a Europa League spot in a playoff against the fourth placed side.

Korean K League side Gyeongnam came in for him in the summer of 2010, but he only made 7 appearances for them and is now a free agent. He had been linked with TFC, but obviously if he wants to come to Canada, there’s only one real option.

Here’s a lengthy piece on Camilio. It’s not in English but you get the idea of his talents. If anyone wants to translate, then great!!

If things work out, will Camilo be one of the Caps designated players? Hopefully it does as he’s just what we’re looking for. A proven goal scorer who is young, has plenty of years left in him and will excite the fans. Fingers crossed we’ll see him in a full Caps jersey soon.

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The Caps have been linked with three other strikers yesterday as well, with most of the info coming from MLS Rumours.

One is Ewerthon, a 29 year old Brazilian with 9 national team Caps in the early noughties and experience with Corinthians in Brazil and European clubs like Borussia Dortmund in Germany and Real Zaragoza in Spain.

He was most recently back in Brazil with Palmeiras, but was released in January after scoring 7 goals in 21 appearances. In his 13 year playing career to date, he has made 323 club appearances, for 7 different clubs and scored 119 goals. That experience would be huge for the current Caps squad, so we’ll just have to see if there’s any truth in the rumours, although he has also been linked with Newcastle United in the English Premiership, where he is reported to have turned down a move just last week.

Talking of football clubs in the north east of England, one Twitter rumour was also linking us with former Middlesborough striker Jérémie Aliadière. Not sure of the validity of this but an interesting one to keep our eye on as he’s only 27 and has played at the top level in England and Scotland.

A more firm rumour seems to concern Hartlepool United’s Adam Boyd. The Daily Mail in the UK has mentioned the Caps interest and having been to Hartlepool, he’d be crazy not to make the move! Boyd has only made 5 appearances for the Monkey Hangers this season but has netted 89 goals in 295 career appearances in the English lower leagues. It would be a big step up in class for the 28 year old, so it’s a bit of a strange one to us. If he’s that good in England, it’s rare one of the Premiership and Championship sides haven’t already snapped him up.

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Turning to the Whitecaps residency team now and the USL announced the PDL schedule for the 2011 season yesterday.

This season the PDL will feature 64 teams in four geographic conferences and nine divisions. Teams will play 16 games and the Whitecaps boys find themselves in the Northwest Division of the Western Conference, alongside Abbotsford Mariners, Kitsap Pumas, Portland Timbers U23, North Sound SeaWolves, Tacoma Tide, Victoria Highlanders and Washington Crossfire.

The PDL postseason format will be announced at a later date. That’s always a worry!

Key dates to watch out for are when defending Champions Portland come a calling on Sunday June 12th (the day after the first team are in Seattle) and what could be an epic away day to the island on the long weekend of Saturday May 21st to play Victoria Highlanders. With the first team not playing that weekend, what better excuse do you need?

The residency will be playing the majority of their games at Simon Fraser Univeristy and kick off their 2011 campaign against Kitsap Pumas on Sunday May 1st at 4pm PST.

Try and get along to some of the residency games if you can and support the future of your Club.

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AFTN’s campaign to get Joe Cannon fired out of a cannon as part of the Whitecaps Countdown ‘Til Kickoff marketing blitz is gathering steam! Our twitter hashtag of #shootjoecannonoutofacannon has been getting a lot of airing and not just by us!

The campaign is backed by members of the Southsiders and a newspaper may be jumping on board to back it soon too!

We’re also trying to narrow down an official song for the campaign and are torn between Cannonball by The Breeders or Human Cannonball by the Butthole Surfers. We may give Joe a rendition of both down at the Cascadia Summit next month.

We’ve been trying to get Joe to comment on the marketing idea but so far to no avail. We can’t possibly confirm rumours though that that is because he is cowering under a bed making chicken noises!

A Whitecaps source told us that it was “unlikely” that Teitur would allow one of his players to undergo the stunt. We have some back up campaigns all set to go though in case this (or rather Joe) doesn’t fly – Wes Knight jousting; Shea “Speed” Salinas is placed on a bus travelling throughout the downtown core constantly at 80 kmph and has to find a way off; Bilal Duckett “dooking for apples” with fans; a Gershon Koffie morning; and Long Tan in some kind of bizarre sunbed challenge.

I would also like to personally challenge any member of the Whitecaps in a full 15 round battle of the UK gameshow “Countdown”. No one will beat me!

Hopefully Joe doesn’t think we’re just wanting to do this because we want to have Jay Nolly as our number one keeper. Although…

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Before we depart, I’d just like to give you a link to an interesting article I read about Why International Stars Should Consider Destinations Besides NY and LA. Some excellent points made. I wonder if anyone will listen.

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Finally, just a reminder/plug that AFTN’s third weekly column appears in the ALL CAPS section of the Metro Online today.

Check it out, along with all of Matt Kieltyka’s blogs for the rest of the week, HERE. And leave some comments there so it doesn’t look a little bare!

Strikers Shortage Starting To Worry Whitecaps Fans

Vancouver Whitecaps added three more players to their squad following today’s MLS Supplemental Draft (seriously, how many fucking drafts does a League need?).

The Caps first selection, New Zealand internaional defender Michael Boxall, seems like a great pick. He has two full international caps for the All Whites and has featured in New Zealand’s Under 23, Under 21 and Olympic sides in recent years.

All great stuff. Good signing etc etc. But, he’s another defender. Not exaclty an area that we’re currently looking weak in.

I know very little about the other two additions from the draft, Canadian midfielder Joe Anderson and American defender Santiago Bedoya.

So let me get this right. We now have two more defenders and another midfielder. Both areas where we have a multitude of options. Can you have too many? Well you can if you’re trying to find your best starting eleven out of them.

Looking at the current squad on the Caps website, we now have 13 signed players and 20 “in camp”, with the latest three additions going into the latter category for evaluation.

Looking at our signed 13, we have 2 goalkeepers, 4 defenders, 5 midfielders, 1 midfielder/forward (who is more widely recognised as a midfielder) and 1 forward. A forward who can’t actually play for the Whitecaps until September.

The 20 “in camp” players consist of 1 goalkeeper, 5 defenders, 9 midfielders, 4 midfielders/forwards and 1, yes, just one, out and out forward. Even the midfielders/forwards from last season that are still around didn’t exactly do wonders at the lower level. Not getting a lot of confidence here.

So the question on people’s lips right now is where the fuck are the strikers?

Today we are two calendar months away from our MLS debut. I want us to hit the ground running. I want the players to know each other inside and out, to have built up the much needed rapport that we need from the get go. If we don’t start adding some top quality forwards soon, we’re not going to have this.

We also have no designated players. Not the be all and end all of things of course. I’d rather we didn’t piss money away anyway on designated players past their prime and living on their name and past reputation. Invest in players who will be with us, and doing the business for us, for many years to come.

Now maybe this is the Club’s masterstroke. To announce two quality strikers as our designated players in the next few days. Make some dramatic grabs from Europe before they go elsewhere in their transfer window. Add the big names, get those late boost from season ticket sales, everything is ticketyboo.

Or perhaps it’s Teitur’s plan to go with the defensive angle again and to try and bore our opposition into submission like last season’s campaign.

Wikipedia (yeah, I know) has the MLS pre-season transfer window as running from January 15th till April 15th. We need to get things moving soon or the natives will start to get all that bit more jittery.

We’ve paid top money for season tickets for next season and what the Whitecaps need to understand is that we expect a return for that money. I would say anything but making the playoffs can be considered a failure and any fan who would be happy with a situation where we don’t needs to take a long hard look at themself and what they thing the purpose of a football team is. Hey, if our first season is to be a “building season” then charge us accordingly for watching that.

What it all boils down to is that we need strikers and we need them now. Once we sign them, once they start banging in the goals and once we start winning games, nothing else will matter.

The 5,000 fans at Swangard last season may have been supportive of a defence minded side with little to no attacking threat and endless bore draws, 20,000 people at Empire and BC Place won’t be that tolerant and neither will those in the media who are already sceptical about the Whitecaps and the game in general.