There. Now you can plan your year.

Above is a list of all Vancouver Whitecaps men's games for the 2012 season that have currently been announced: Residency USSDA U-18 and U-16 doubleheaders, Residency USL PDL games, MLS Reserves, and of course the MLS first team. Also present is the Voyageurs Cup schedule and Canadian men's national team action. Not yet available is the 2012/13 USSDA season but this should be enough to get you started.

Cracked Open
Paul James
self-published, eBook only, February 2012
$9.99 (Smashwords, Amazon Kindle)

In Canadian soccer, Paul James is as controversial as anyone. He's never kept his opinions about anyone to himself. So it's not surprising that James indiscriminately goes on the attack in Cracked Open, his equal-parts soccer memoir and harrowing personal tale of drug addiction. In fact, it would have been more surprising if he hadn't.

All the same, James's venom is staggering. When he writes a short article in The Globe & Mail calling for Dwayne De Rosario to leave Toronto FC, that's one thing: in book length, with James calling out players who didn't commit to his teams and executives who didn't support him and would-be friends who betrayed his trust, it's overwhelming. One minute James is relating a gritty story of trying to overcome his crack cocaine problem, and the next he's trying to settle an old score.

This book is an extraordinary thing. Self-published online by James, this is raw in the best sense of the word. James lashes out at, none-too-gently, an entire who's who of Canadian soccer: Stephen Hart, Jason de Vos, Julian de Guzman, Ali Gerba, Chris Pozniak, Tam Nsaliwa, Dwayne De Rosario, Bob Lenarduzzi, just to pick the ones you've heard of. That's not counting foreigners who spent time in Canada like John Carver and Tommy Soehn, or figures from the past like Kevan Pipe. He takes shots at the Voyageurs, Canada's national supporters' group, as an organization (and a few individuals). And woe betide anyone who is too aggressive about the 1987 Merlion Cup.

What I think James wanted was a memoir detailing his spiral into drug addiction, his fight to get out of it, and his opinions on how society's mistakes make an addict's problems so hard to recover from. What we got was a bit of that and a tonne of vitriol and old score-settling as James takes his hatchet to anybody who's gotten in his way over thirty years in high-level soccer. For Canadian soccer fans it's almost an essential read, but that doesn't mean James comes off well.

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Joe Cannon
Alain Rochat - Carlyle Mitchell - Jay DeMerit - Young-pyo Lee
Gershon Koffie
Russell Teibert - Etienne Barbara
Davide Chiumiento
Camilo Sanvezzo - Eric Hassli

What's this?

With all of the Vancouver Whitecaps roster moves early this off-season, I thought it might be useful to keep things in perspective. So, after every couple of major changes, I'll provide an update of what I view as Vancouver's best eighteen at this precise moment in time, counting only players either under contract to the Whitecaps organization or seemingly certain to become so.

The first installment was on December 1, 2011. The next installment came on January 12, 2012.

I know I've experienced skepticism about Barbara's value but, actually, if I pencil him into right midfield, this lineup looks a little better. It allows us to put Chiumiento into a devil-may-care offensive role in the middle, which allows us to move Koffie back as a defensive midfield in a 4-4-2 diamond, and all of a sudden this looks like a team which will probably still lose a lot of soccer games, but will lose them really excitingly. Certainly, if Rennie can't get this unit to move the ball then I don't know what the hell we're going to do.

Notes:

• Etienne Barbara is listed as a starter despite not being signed (he indirectly moves John Thorrington out of the starting eleven and Philippe Davies out of the eighteen). I'm operating under the assumption that Barbara will sign, but you know what they say about assuming. Also added to the eighteen is Brad Knighton (replacing Brian Sylvestre as backup goalkeeper) and Darren Mattocks (who bumps Michael Nanchoff out of the eighteen by moving Long Tan to wing cover).
• I'm also giving Barbara Mustapha Jarju's #7. No, this isn't my sly way of saying I think Jarju's about to be cut. Barbara wore #7 in the NASL and I didn't just want to put a question mark in the middle of his little circle, so I gave him a number that would make sense and then shrugged my shoulders.
• Obviously, this is unlikely to be the actual lineup we enter the season with, particularly given that we need to either move some international players or acquire some international slots by March.
• The other weakness is in central midfield, as ever: Gershon Koffie and Davide Chiumiento aren't quite the perfect spine of a team. But this is MLS and nobody's perfect. I think they'll do and Koffie, at least, is covered by well by Thorrington.

Bob Lenarduzzi: A Canadian Soccer Story
Bob Lenarduzzi and Jim Taylor
Harbour Publishing, 224 pp, September 2011
$28.95 (list price), $18.15 (Amazon)

There's a certain tension in Bob Lenarduzzi's memoir, co-written with veteran western sportswriter Jim Taylor.

Lenarduzzi is only 56 years old and active in the highest echelons of Canadian soccer. So he is careful not to tell too ribald a tale, not to burn too many bridges, and not to speak too freely. The book, at times, feels like a grab for cash and attention. The first chapter, stargazing at Lenarduzzi's time with the latter-USL and MLS Whitecaps and featuring a thoroughly glowing portrayal of Greg Kerfoot, might as well have ended with a phone number for the Whitecaps ticket office.

But Lenarduzzi's also been around the Canadian soccer world longer than I've been alive and has the stories you'd expect. To those of us who grew up hearing the names of Tomasz Radzinski, Carl Valentine, and others, Lenarduzzi's is the first long-form first-person narrative of those wild days and wilder personalities. Lenarduzzi fights mostly with kids gloves but throws a few hard jabs, and even when he leaves you to read between the lines it's at least entertaining.

This book is light-weight and suffers for it. Its ambitions are few, its production feels rushed, and even the casual fan won't learn a lot. The recollections seem like an excuse to pad Lenarduzzi's treatises on the future of Canadian soccer into book length. With his history Lenarduzzi is just the man to write a fascinating, informative, and entertaining look into the woolly days of western Canadian soccer through the 1970s, '80s, and '90s: what a pity this book doesn't do it.

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Joe Cannon
Alain Rochat - Carlyle Mitchell - Jay DeMerit - Young-pyo Lee
Russell Teibert - John Thorrington - Gershon Koffie - Davide Chiumiento
Camilo Sanvezzo
Eric Hassli

What's this?

With all of the Vancouver Whitecaps roster moves early this off-season, I thought it might be useful to keep things in perspective. So, after every couple of major changes, I'll provide an update of what I view as Vancouver's best eighteen at this precise moment in time, counting only players either under contract to the Whitecaps organization or seemingly certain to become so.

The first installment was on December 1, 2011.

As many a fan has grumbled, the situation doesn't look that much better than it did at the beginning of December. The wingers looked unconvincing, the central midfield eyegougingly weak in front-line talent, and the goalkeepers inadequate: we now have a good starting goalkeeper (even if it's the same one from last year) but haven't really sorted the other two.

Heading into the draft, the Whitecaps still have more than one Andrew Wenger's worth of problems.

Notes:

1. Changes from last time: John Thorrington and Joe Cannon, both re-signed, return to the starting lineup and displace Philippe Davies and Brian Sylvestre. Those two are kicked to the bench.
2. Also appearing, albeit in a bench capacity, is Martin Bonjour; he knocks Michael Boxall out of the eighteen. That is only an educated guess.
3. Newly added but not appearing in the eighteen are midfielder Matt Watson and winger Lee Nguyen; I agonized over whether Watson or Davies would make the bench but in the end I took the youth of Big Phil. You could make an argument that Nguyen should be the bench winger in lieu of Michael Nanchoff, but I wouldn't. (The better argument would be for Atiba Harris, who I once again leave out because I don't think he's good.)

Yesterday, SB Nation kicked off its second ever MLS Mock SuperDraft. In the 2011 edition, yours truly picked Darlington Nagbe first overall in a selection which would have gotten me the best overall goal but, pretty clearly, not the best overall player (although he sure had a better 2011 season than Omar Salgado did). I also got the ball out of the infield with my pick of Michael Farfan eighth overall rather than Michael Nanchoff, then struck out completely in the second round when I went for John Rooney.

The SuperDraft gets a lot of flak, particularly from fans of teams like the Vancouver Whitecaps with a strong academy system. It's not the most important source of talent and none of the players we take are likely to have the careers of a Russell Teibert or a Bryce Alderson; these are older players who spent prime development years in the bass-ackwards American college system. But there's still good talent on offer: players with brains and skill who can definitely help the Whitecaps. No MLS team yet has successfully built without help from the SuperDraft, and seventeen players of defending champions Los Angeles Galaxy are SuperDraft graduates.

Vancouver is picking second in the SuperDraft and has a chance at a fine player. Recent second overall picks include Sam Cronin, Tony Tchani, Brek Shea, and Bakary Soumare. While the depth of this year's SuperDraft is questionable it's considered a good one for front-line talent, so we can only hope that the real Whitecaps are as intelligent and as lucky as my mock Whitecaps were.

My picks come after the jump. The full list of players selected in the 2012 SB Nation Mock MLS SuperDraft is here.

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Shall I state the obvious? The 2011 Vancouver Whitecaps season wasn't exactly award-worthy.

There was an excellent opening-day win against Toronto FC, one of the two teams in Major League Soccer as terrible as we were. There was a credible draw in Seattle, a lucky two-leg win over the Montreal Impact in the Voyageurs Cup, and a late-season two-game winning streak that included beating an unfairly depleted Real Salt Lake team denied their original game day at Empire Field by our crappy friendly against Fat Yaya Toure and Manchester City.

However, tradition obliges us to grace this bunch of losers with their due awards all the same: to recognize those who rose from the depths of awfulness to reach the relative peaks of averageness. Back in October the Whitecaps gave out their team awards and I responded in kind, naming Alain Rochat the team's MVP and defensive player of the year. Rochat, as well as most of the other winners, had good seasons in a losing cause and deserved recognition.

Eighty Six Forever has its own award traditions as well. Awards that don't necessarily recognize the best players of the season, but certainly the most memorable. The players who deserved better than they got, or the players who emblazoned their names onto YouTube in letters of fire. The players who, for better or worse, made the Vancouver Whitecaps a more exciting team to watch and to follow. I am, of course, referring to the Second Annual Official Eighty Six Forever Unofficial Vancouver Whitecaps Awards.

For historically-minded readers, the 2010 awards are here. After the jump, the winners of the most prestigious awards of any SB Nation-affiliated Vancouver Whitecaps blog.

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Brian Sylvestre
Alain Rochat - Carlyle Mitchell - Jay DeMerit - Young-pyo Lee
Russell Teibert - Philippe Davies - Gershon Koffie - Davide Chiumiento
Camilo Sanvezzo
Eric Hassli

What's this?

With all of the Vancouver Whitecaps roster moves early this off-season, I thought it might be useful to keep things in perspective. So, after every couple of major changes, I'll provide an update of what I view as Vancouver's best eighteen at this precise moment in time, counting only players either under contract to the Whitecaps organization or seemingly certain to become so.

Martin Rennie, Tom Soehn, if you're reading this, I'm hoping you'll do something about that central midfield spot. And the depth on the wing isn't exactly inspiring confidence.

Notes:

1. Not listed are Joe Cannon, Jay Nolly, Greg Janicki, Jonathan Leathers, John Thorrington, or Peter Vagenas, all of whom are not technically under contract with the Whitecaps.
2. Yes, Young-pyo Lee is listed despite also not being under contract to the Whitecaps. I'm taking the word of the press that he's all-but signed, sealed, and delivered, since without Lee the guy in that right back spot would be Declan Rodriguez.