Coffee with the Caps, Friday March 11

Good Friday morning Caps fans, hope you all have had a good week thus far and are winding down ahead of a well-deserved break.

A few items to round up from the week that was in Caps-land. The most recent update: the team has a new trialist in training, presumably with an eye towards providing more goalkeeping depth.

Cody Cropper is the man in question, out of contract after playing at Memphis 901 FC last year in the United Soccer League, on loan from FC Cincinnati. The 29-year-old last had meaningful MLS playing time with the New England Revolution, where he racked up 36 appearances.

I’m pretty ambivalent about the notion of bringing Cropper on board, simply because if the Caps get to the point where he (or Isaac Boehmer) is getting serious minutes in goal, we’re probably screwed anyway.

The fact that the brain trust is sticking to their commitment not to bring in anyone to challenge Thomas Hasal in goal is a testament to how good the youngster has been in the first two matches.

While Hasal’s stats suffer due to a rocky first game that was in no way his fault, his performance on Saturday against NYCFC earned him MLS team of the week honors.

Sure, it would have been nice if the Caps were looking to bring in a Canadian Premier League keeper, potentially a Canadian player, with a bit higher of a floor than Cropper but if Hasal is unlikely to be displaced, your options are a bit limited. Best to go with the youngster, who has plenty of room to keep growing and turn into an above average MLS keeper (or even more).

In other news, one of the first shoes of the promised turning over a new leaf in the Caps organization appears to have dropped. It has been reported that Chief Operating Officer Rachel Lewis has left the club.

It comes after executive team members were suspended in the wake of the October sexual assault allegations against former Whitecaps women’s team coach Hubert Busby Jr.

There will be no real shedding of tears over this one, given the myriad of scandals that occurred during Lewis’ tenure and one can hope other leadership members will be next to go.

And finally, we have some actual football to play this weekend. The squad heads to Houston to take on the Dynamo, in a match they will be looking to take all three points from.

It is too early to hit the panic button either way but not winning this one would be a blow, as the Dynamo remain liable to be at the bottom of the conference. While Brian White has been taking it easy in training, one hopes it is in service of his first start of the season. And one hopes the good defensive performance from last match can be matched against a generally weak Houston attack.

In any event, this is the first chance we will have to hopefully see a team that more closely resembles the Caps that Vanni Sartini got firing on all cylinders last season. Fingers crossed that all comes to fruition.

Best of the Rest

We chat about the state of the Caps with our good friends over at Dynamo Theory

A look at how the attack can kick into gear against Houston

Can we start imagining an MLS team winning the CONCACAF Champions League? New England and Seattle bested their Liga MX opposition 3-0 while NYCFC beat Guatemalan side Comunicaciones 3-1.

MLS has taken out a $25 million loan from a group of Black banks in a move to address inequality

Charlotte FC could be in for a long expansion season