Playing the league leading LAFC Saturday didn’t go as planned for the Vancouver Whitecaps, as they suffered their worst loss of the season – an embarrassing 6-1 shellacking – but the players know it’s something they can learn from.
"The game gives you a lot of lessons when a team like that hands it to you,” explained defender Doneil Henry. “They were great on the day, and we were really bad. We haven't been that bad defensively all season and the LAFC were the teachers that day."
It was back to business Monday at the Caps training facility at UBC, where no one was making excuses – instead, just trying to move on.
“We don’t have a choice. You have to react quickly after what happened in LA, and put everything in perspective,” said head coach Marc Dos Santos.
Dos Santos says the loss doesn’t have an impact on what kind of players the team is possibly looking to bring in when the next transfer window opens Tuesday. He says the ones they need now are the same ones they needed before. But what it does change is the ability to do parallel moves.
"If we don't think that the right player is available, the right investment, investing the right player is not on and it's not going to help us in moving forward and becoming better, we're not going to do moves," Dos Santos said.
The club is now getting set for a busy month, with six games on the schedule over the next two-and-a-half weeks. The first is a Canadian Championship matchup against Cavalry FC, a team out of the newly formed Canadian Premier League, that has been hot out of the gates.
"We need to take it with a lot of seriousness and not take anything for granite,” keeper Maxime Crepeau told the media Monday. “We've seen in the past underdogs are going through, and they aren't underdogs, we're not the best team in the sense of everyone is equal, in the cup anything can happen at any time, so we need to be careful."
Henry, a fellow Canadian, echoed the statement.
"We want to win this tournament. Canada Cup tournaments, especially for Canadians, we all want to win. What we can't do is go there with the mindset of winning and thinking it's going to be handed to us. Every Canadian derby match is going to be gritty, and it's tough, so we're looking forward to a battle,” Henry said.
A win against Calgary could go a long way in creating momentum for the Cap, as they head into the final few months of the season. They are six points out of a playoff spot, but feel they are still within reach.
"Anyone who thinks the playoffs are a far target at this point is crazy. Mathematically we're always still in,” Henry said. “A lot to play for, but we do know we need to start picking up points. Games that we're tying, we need to win. And we need to go out there with the mentality that every game is the last game."
The Whitecaps kick off the first leg of their Canadian Championship qualifying round matchup against Calvary FC Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. PST, while they host Sporting Kansas City on Saturday.
