Report Card: Whitecaps Beat Loons

The Vancouver Whitecaps triumphed over Minnesota United in a key victory for their playoff hopes. Let’s see how the individual players got on

Maxime Crepeau: 7.5

Crepeau made a couple of solid saves and generally looked confident coming out for the ball.

Florian Jungwirth: 7.0

He didn’t deal with the Minnesota goal the best, but it was a difficult ball to deal with in general. Other than that though he was once again a calming force in Vancouver’s back 3.

Ranko Veselinovic: 9.0

I thought this was Veselinovic’s best ever game as a Whitecap. Go back and watch the extended highlights for this game on the MLS youtube channel. An astonishing number of dangerous scoring chances were negated either because he was there to make a vital intervention or because he was there to shepherd a Minnesota player into a less dangerous position.

Jake Nerwinski: 7.0

Another pretty solid outing as a centre back for Nerwinski. He was never really exposed and he made 3 interceptions which is nice.

Bruno Gaspar: 6.5

Gaspar turned in another decent performance without really blowing me away. Perhaps I am biased against him because when I go to the game’s he’s always playing right in front of me and looks like he’s giving about 35% effort. That said, he never got into any big trouble and he did manage a key pass.

Leonard Owusu: 7.0

Owusu continues to turn in solid performances under Sartini. He always looks a bit like if the world’s greatest midfielder were forced to play on rollerblades. He progressed the ball well and was unlucky that Osvaldo Alonso blocked his volley or else he might have had a goal as well.

Russell Teibert: 9.0

Teibert is currently the Whitecaps’ best centre midfielder. He lead the team with a staggering 6 interceptions and his pass was key to Michael Boxall’s own goal. There was a fair amount of backwards passing, sure, but there were also consequential forwards passes. That’s about all you can ask.

Javain Brown: 7.0

Brown was back to his usual self after a poor performance against Portland. He was not dribbled past, made 5 blocks, and managed to get 3 of his own shots off.

Ryan Gauld: 8.0

Gauld was a lot more involved defensively than any of his previous games but still found time to contribute directly to over half of Vancouver’s shots on the night.

Brian White: 9.0

It’s too bad for Brian White that he isn’t a hyped 19 year old scoring 2 goals every 30 games in a big five league because otherwise he would be the US National Team’s first choice striker by now. Thankfully though, he continues to score goals if they are appreciated or not.

Cristian Dájome: 6.5

Personally I think Dájome fills the role of a wingback much better than he does a striker in the 3-4-1-2 system. He put in a lot of hard work but he didn’t get a whole lot going offensively

Subs:

Deiber Caicedo: 5.0

Caicedo was quiet after coming off the bench. He wasn’t involved in any shots and at the end of the day that is what he is on the field to do

Janio Bikel: 4.0

Bikel was ostensibly brought on to tighten things up defensively but he really struggled to impose himself. He was beaten 1v1 several times and gave the ball away.

Cristian Gutiérrez, Erik Godoy, and Lucas Cavallini:

I didn’t really have strong feelings about the performances of any of these substitutes. Except that Cavallini put in a lot of thankless work to kill time and preserve the win.