*Updated* Vancouver Whitecaps FAQs: What’s The Deal With Sam Adekugbe

Welcome to Vancouver Whitecaps FAQs. This is a new series i’m planning to help casual fans keep up with the team. Despite an average attendance of 20,000, outlets that write about the ‘Caps like us, or our friends over at AFTN and FTBL tend to have a core readership of only a few thousand. If you measure by Twitter followers we’re all somewhere between 1000 and 3000 followers. This suggests to me that there’s a lot of causal fans of the ‘Caps out there who aren’t necessarily keeping up with the latest news. Now there’s nothing wrong with being a casual fan, i’m a casual fan of lots of stuff, but one needs only to go to any Whitecaps post on Facebook or Twitter to see that there’s a lot of people who are a bit confused about what’s actually going on. So rather than explain it to each of them individually my plan is to have ready made answers that people can link these fans to, in order to help them out. If you are a casual fan who’s been linked to this article we’d love to have you as a regular reader. We get more clicks and you get to impress your friends with your extensive Whitecaps knowledge; Everybody wins! With that said let’s get into todays FAQ.

A lot of people have been wondering what’s going on with Sam Adekugbe. During the 2015 season the left back appeared to have wrestled the starting spot away from Jordan Harvey only to lose it again after the young Canadian went down with an injury. Now that Harvey has moved on to LAFC there have been calls for the starting spot to go to Adekugbe but that’s probably not going to happen. Why not? you ask, well it’s an interesting story that involves a complex web of...nah i’m just kidding it’s actually pretty simple.

While he was second choice to Harvey, Adekugbe was loaned to then championship side Brighton and Hove Albion because he was considered too good for WFC2 and USL. Adekugbe generally did pretty well in England playing five times for Brighton’s U-23 team and five times for the first team. After his loan finished he was loaned out again to Swedish giants IFK Göteborg and made nine first team appearances. Göteborg are expected to make the transfer permanent Adekugbe is expected to be sold to Norwegian side Valerenga

In many ways selling Adekugbe makes a lot of sense for both parties. If Adekugbe returns to Vancouver next year there’s a chance he could make the starting spot his own. There are, however, no guarantees that this would be the case. For the Canadian national team Adekugbe is currently second choice to Marcel De Jong who also plays for the Whitecaps. Adekugbe certainly has the talent to be a good MLS player but given the choice between almost definite starting time in Sweden Norway (and possibly Europa league) or only the possibility of playing in MLS then I know which i’d pick. Furthermore Adekugbe’s family immigrated to Canada from the U.K when he was 10. Adekugbe has made no secret of the fact that he has ambitions to return and play in England. Playing in Europe is a big step toward that goal.

From the perspective of the Vancouver Whitecaps selling Adekugbe also makes a lot of sense. They already have the excellent Marcel De Jong and Brett Levis who looks to have recovered from his injury and is ready for prime time. With these two players it makes sense to get a couple hundred thousand out of a player they don’t really need.

Thanks for reading. If you were linked to this article, did it answer your question? What are some other frequently asked questions you’d like to see answered? Let me know in the comments.