BEHIND THE PLAY #60

We’re having a moment here in Vancouver. A good one as it relates to the game.

A Vancouver Soccer Moment

The Vancouver Whitecaps are, by a huge consensus, the best team in MLS at the moment and are on the verge of being crowned the best in all of CONCACAF. Rise FC put almost 15,000 bums in seats at their inaugural game in the new Northern Super League on April 16th and will have their third home game tonight (May 5) having now moved to the locally legendary Swangard Stadium.

Meanwhile their co-habitants there, TSS Rovers, who have made a three year habit of providing the League 1 BC presence in the Canadian Championships, also known as the Voyageurs Cup, will play away to Valour FC of the Canadian Premier League (CPL) in Winnipeg on Wednesday, May 7. Should they win that game, which is not far-fetched given they beat the same Valour team two years ago 3-1, it will mean a home and home series in the next round against… the Vancouver Whitecaps. A true derby. This would really be special.

Circling back to the Whitecaps.

Their semi-final against Inter-Miami filled BC Place with over 54,000 supporters. Were they all there for the excitement of this Cup run? Some maybe but most were of course there to see Lionel Messi. He skipped out last time and it pissed people off. He was regularly boo’d this time around and was ineffective. Luis Suarez was even worse. Barely noticeable. Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba made more positive contributions.

But the best part was what the Caps did. They continued their confident play and took a 2-0 lead back to Miami for the second leg along with 200 supporters in tow. Their 3-1 victory there, for a 5-1 aggregate win means they will play in the final for the CONCACAF Champions Cup against Cruz Azul in Mexico City on June 1. As someone who has been going to Vancouver Whitecaps games since 1974 and who played for the Vancouver 86ers in 1989, 1991 and 1992, I can confidently say this is the biggest local soccer story since the Whitecaps 1979 NASL Soccer Bowl victory.

I wrote about the Rise game in the last email and did a “good, bad and ugly” summary that in retrospect feels a bit premature and/or harsh. Swangard will be their home for the rest of the season and is perfect for Rise. It’s the right size and has always been the stadium that most long term supporters of the game here feel most comfortable going to watch a game. They play Halifax Tides tonight and I plan to be there.

The Rovers are the third feel-good story here. (Full disclosure: I’ve been friends with TSS founder and co-owner, Colin Elmes, going back to when we played our last year of youth soccer together decades ago). Their men’s League 1 team have found a way to get their name into the draw for the Canadian Championship ever since it was expanded beyond MLS and CPL to include regional League 1 champions. Should they oust Valour, they will bring their boisterous Swangardians supporters group to both legs of the tie; some of whom are also members of Caps supporters groups, so allegiances will be tested.

The other angle to this, and all ‘giant-killer’ ties, is that there would be a considerable financial boon for the Rovers based on revenue splits of the two games with the bonus of no travel costs. This is important. This sort of potential pot of gold, occasional as it may be, is really aspirational for amateur clubs (sorry, I won’t call League 1 semi-professional, as the league brands itself, until the players are actually paid). It can go a long way to moving projects from ‘treading water’ to sustainable.

So the best professional team in Canada and the US is attempting to become the best in North America, the reality of professional women’s games being played in the city is taking hold and chapter three of a cinderella story named Rovers is being written. All happening now.

If you truly support the game, the ball is now in your court to decide which of these you will support with your money and presence.

A rarity among soccer podcasts

I’m not a podcast guy in general. I should be but I find they too often exist simply to show they exist, so I end up rarely listening/watching any; soccer or otherwise. The content is too often stale or positioned to serve as secondary to amplifying the personalities of those presenting it. Some definitely seem designed to be a stepping stone to bigger dreams. There is of course nothing inherently wrong with that if the content is consistently strong, relevant and worth your listening time. I just don’t seem to find many that meet this threshold.

But this episode of The Broadscast, a Footy Prime offshoot, with Amy Walsh, Clare Rustad and Rhian Wilkinson does. It hits all the right notes for me. They’re informed, very comfortable with themselves and each other and can bring the combination of lived experience and reasoned assessment very nicely to the topics they discuss. There’s no posturing, talking over each other or getting wildly off-topic for extended periods. The half hour flew by. Here’s the one I’m talking about. It came out on Sunday, May 3.

Papers

Six years ago I yanked my youngest son, quite willingly on his part, out of school for ten days and we went to England and Spain and caught five games. If you’re ever worried about taking your kid out of school for something like this, my recommendation is don’t be. He was in Grade 11 and far from an A student when we did this trip yet he’s managed to end up graduating, this month, from the Sauder School of Business at UBC.

Bookending three La Liga games on this trip were the two legs of the Champions League semi-final between Barcelona and Liverpool. I think I’ve already written about the agony of getting tickets for both of those games so I won’t go through it again. This ticket has been pinned to his bedroom wall since we got back. And that’s what matters. I doubt his degree will be.

I’ll leave you with links to schedules for Vancouver Rise FC, the Whitecaps and TSS Rovers (men’s and women’s teams).