Players Out
DF Mouloud Akloul
MF Terry Dunfield
DF Blake Wagner
DF/MF Wes Knight

Players In
noooooooooobody

Roster Spots Available That Weren't Filled
Three

Total 2011 Salary Cap Relief From Releasing Wes Knight, Mouloud Akloul, and Blake Wagner (Hey, That's Three Guys!)
$0

Number of Games Played at Right Back By Jeb Brovsky or John Thorrington
I refuse to count but too damned many.

Assets Received for Terry Dunfield
Allocation money and the MLS rights to a 17-year-old who doesn't want to play for Vancouver unless he has no other option.

Number of Games Played in Midfield by Peter Vagenas
Shut up.

Why Did We Need That Allocation Money Again?
Because we gave up a buttload of our existing allocation money to bring in Jordan Harvey.

Wow, Jordan Harvey's Terrible! We Must Have Been Really Desperate. Why Did We Need Jordan Harvey?
Because Tom Soehn moved Alain Rochat, the best left back in Major League Soccer, to centre back.

Why Did Alain Rochat Move to Centre Back?
Because the Whitecaps were short a centre back after releasing Mouloud Akloul for no reason then completely failing to replace him.

Isn't Bilal Duckett a Centre Back?
Now you're just trying to piss me off.

The Vancouver Whitecaps have announced that today's game against Real Salt Lake has been postponed. No date for a replay has yet been announced.

The reason the game has been postponed is that it's raining in Vancouver. This is not terribly unusual, you may say. Unfortunately, it's raining in Vancouver while Empire Field is covered with temporary grass for our upcoming glamourous friendly against Manchester City, from Manchester. This temporary grass, which we need for big-name opponents who won't accept anything but the best, is some sod on a tarp.

As such, despite the pitch having been covered by plastic sheeting the surface has been rendered completely unplayable by a fairly ordinary Vancouver summer shower. If this rain keeps up through the weekend then our big friendly will turn into a synchronized swimming meet. The forecast calls for rain more-or-less all day today, drizzle with chance of real rain on Sunday, and overcast on Monday, so those of you thinking about buying City tickets might want to hold off.

Of course, if not for Manchester City we'd be playing today. Games have been played at Empire in worse conditions than this on the artificial turf because the artificial turf can drain. The Whitecaps kow-towing to their almighty lords from over the pond has already hurt this team's chances in the regular season and it's now forced them to postpone a marquee match against the best team in Major League Soccer. And the friendly might not even happen anyway.

If I were a Real Salt Lake fan I'd be furious. Not Voyageurs Cup furious but pretty upset. Their team has flown all the way out to Vancouver, the most far-flung outpost in the Major League Soccer empire, for nothing. It would be one thing if the postponement were a simple act of God, but this delay is entirely down to Vancouver's insistence that they bring in Manchester City two days after an MLS league game. If I were a Salt Lake fan I'd be demanding a forfeit: this is the Whitecaps' fault.

Can someone explain to me why it's an accepted MLS tradition to bend over for European clubs like this? The friendlies sell well, sure: to ex-pats and Eurosnobs who aren't going to buy tickets next time the Columbus Crew are in town, and the hefty appearance fees do serious damage to any profit the MLS team was hoping to make. They hurt the team mid-season and they force a club to upturn its operations just to make some prima donnas from the other side of the Atlantic happy. Then a team comes over, stays in its hotel without interacting with the community beyond maybe a ticketed practice, kicks the everloving hell out of the home side, and goes on its merry way.

How does that help? What did Toronto FC gain when Real Madrid pasted them? Great Gabe Gala jokes, sure, but I don't think that's a worthwhile trade! Are we Vancouver fans really so consumed by our own inferiority that we consider watching one of England's five best teams jog around a terrible field demolishing our boys a priority?

I understand the appeal of the big-name friendly. What I don't understand is why we feel our teams must bend over to the demands of the big team. If Manchester City didn't want to play on a Wednesday and refused to accept Empire Field's normal configuration, I'd say "well then fuck off" and go find somebody else. Bring in a team from the Championship, or Serie B, or from Russia where artificial turf is common. If you're a Whitecaps fan would you really be disappointed to see Hull City or Crystal Palace in town? If you're not a Whitecaps fan, why should I care what you think?

Obviously Major League Soccer is inferior to the English Premier League. That doesn't mean we should be subservient to them. Let's grow some backbone and stop compromising our league for the sake of the foreign fan.

The better team won. I don't mean that in a "better team on the day" sense, I mean that in "Toronto is the better team, and they won." A Canadian-friendly neutral should be glad for this result because, while Toronto is obviously going to have a tough time in the CONCACAF Champions League, Vancouver under Tom Soehn would have embarrassed us all.

Long-time readers will know how much I hate match referee Dave Gantar and how eager I am to throw responsibility for the result onto his shoulders. Unfortunately, we can't blame the refereeing, which was poor but even: Joao Plata's joke of a penalty made up for Jay DeMerit's joke of a clearance off the line. The penalty never should have happened but the earlier goal should have counted; we can't complain. Nor will I rant about Mikael Yourassowsky clipping Alain Rochat's heels en route to the winning goal: there was contact but it looked incidental and accidental to me with Rochat just being unlucky to lose his balance on the run. A close but fair no call in my books.

I'm going to come back to the coaching. Again and again. I've said before that the Vancouver Whitecaps were bloody lucky to beat the Philadelphia Union and even luckier to draw the Seattle Sounders: as far as my eye can tell, Vancouver hasn't played a good game since Soehn came aboard and the Philadelphia game was the only one that was even decent. For the most part, the Whitecaps have been getting the shit kicked out of them by teams like Toronto, Chivas USA, and Sporting Kansas City.

Under Teitur Thordarson, the Vancouver Whitecaps took on Toronto FC while suffering from a number of key injuries. Yet they thoroughly outplayed Toronto in the home opener (a 4-2 win) and were even more dominant in the first leg of the Voyageurs Cup final that the team was spectacularly unlucky to only draw. In the abortive second leg, Vancouver well outplayed Toronto (although the FCs had some chances) and were en route to a well-earned 1-0 victory. This is without counting the USL-1/USSF D2 Whitecaps' performances where, with the exception of the last match in 2010 where the Cup had already been decided, Vancouver always played Toronto extremely tough and compiled a winning record.

Under Tom Soehn, Toronto has beat the everloving hell out of Vancouver twice.

His prized prodigy Jeb Brovsky was the second-worst player on the field. A goalkeeper he believes in so much he fired Mike Salmon over it, Joe Cannon, could have single-handedly cost Vancouver three goals through rank incompetence on another day. Soehn built the team. Soehn picked Cannon in the expansion draft, writing off $200,000 in valuable salary cap room for an increasingly erratic has-been. Soehn decided that Terry Dunfield can play attacking mid until he realized how crazy this was and put Brovsky in the role (which turned out to be no less crazy). Soehn decided that, when he was playing a must-win game against Toronto FC with his captain limping from a groin problem, Blake Wagner would be adequate insurance against injury. Soehn decided to play the reserves on Wednesday, which I supported, but then he decided as soon as they started losing that he had to wear out Eric Hassli and Camilo Sanvezzo trying to turn the game around, which was completely nuts.

Of course the players aren't blameless. Jonathan Leathers gave Joao Plata far too easy a time most of the night, Jay DeMerit looked like he should have ruled himself out of the lineup, and Michael Boxall's inexperience allowed Toronto's attackers to get around him. The midfield, with the exception of Dunfield, spent too much time trying to crash the ballcarrier, which led to some nice takeaways for Gershon Koffie but also gave Toronto miles of passing room they didn't hesitate to exploit.

Yet how many of those weaknesses were absent when Thordarson coached the team? Under Teitur the central midfield was a position of strength; the ball movement was limited but you simply would not run passes by Dunfield and Koffie. Under Soehn, with the same players, it's been a catastrophic weakness for seven games and counting.

I don't pretend Teitur Thordarson was some wonder coach. He's here as the most convenient point of comparison, not because he's the saviour and we desperately need to bring him back. Detractors said he was overwhelmed in MLS and in ways it seemed like he was: he was sometimes slow to adjust, sometimes held onto his tactical substitutions until it was too late for them to help. Some of the criticisms of Thordarson were unfair but many of them weren't.

The problem is that Thordarson's replacement is leading this team into a spiral of horrible games against mediocre opposition and they're not getting any better. Old strengths are now weaknesses and old weaknesses are not improved. His lineups seem almost whimsical and you have a better chance of making the gameday eighteen if you're one of "his" boys. The players then go out and get creamed, we make excuses, and then the whole thing starts all over again.

Firing Tom Soehn mid-season right after firing Thordarson would make the Whitecaps look like a Mickey Mouse organization. This is undeniably true. But keeping a leader so obviously out of his depth might do far worse damage.

It was theoretically possible for me to assume that the decision to take away the Vancouver Whitecaps' 2-1 lead in the Voyageurs Cup final was a fair one. Theoretically.

If, for example, the Canadian Soccer Association hadn't set up this entire tournament in Toronto's favour, I might be better-inclined. Toronto has spent the past two years whining about fixture congestion (fixture congestion which isn't nearly as bad as defending NASL champion and current best-team-in-the-league Puerto Rico faces every single year, but never mind that), so the CSA made the Voyageurs Cup a cup rather than an equitable league-style tournament. Then they made Toronto play Edmonton, expected to be the weakest side in the tournament, not by drawing lots or any other fair random technique, but by fiat. They decided that their would be bogus "seedings" that had not been announced or hinted at in the previous tournament; seedings which ranked Toronto first because they were reigning champions and Edmonton last because that way they'd play Toronto. Then they scheduled Edmonton's home game at an extremely early time which ensured a mediocre FC Edmonton crowd in a cavernous Commonwealth Stadium (an utterly unsuitable venue which Edmonton was forced to play in by... you guessed it... the Canadian Soccer Association).

They've spent the entire 2011 soccer season lining Toronto's road to the Voyageurs Cup final with myrrh, so excuse me if I don't give them the benefit of the doubt on this one. Rain and lightning racks BMO Field; that's not the CSA's fault. And if lightning is imperiling the players then of course play must be suspended. First-rate sports blogger and Toronto FC fan Tyler Dellow, in attendance, told me that the lightning wasn't striking the stadium itself but was "within a [kilometer] or so". Well, better safe than sorry.

There are only two things the Canadian Soccer Association could do wrong. One would be to imperil the lives of fans or players, which luckily didn't happen. The other would be to declare that an hour-old game which Vancouver was leading didn't count. That the entire premise of soccer, "the team which scores more goals is the winner", doesn't apply. While Toronto FC's field staff sat around with their thumbs up their butts rather than roll tarps over the field or bust or bust our the squeegees, and while Toronto FC's head coach turned to the cameras just before the match was 70% completed and declared that it was unplayable, the CSA directly intervened to, very possibly, change the outcome of the national championship which they pretend to hold in such high regard.

They might as well have taken a shit in the Voyageurs Cup itself. Toronto FC will get a free chance to play the game again. Anybody who believes in sportsmanship must hope that they choke on it.

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