Coffee with the Caps, Friday May 13

Good Friday morning Caps fans, hope you all have made it through this week unscathed and are gearing up for the weekend. And hope Friday the 13th isn’t, well, spooky.

It was a triumphant week for Vancouver, who cleared the absolute bare minimum that many of us were uncertain they could clear: beating a Canadian Premier League team in the Voyageurs Cup.

Credit to the always on point Twitter admin for having some fun at the club’s expense after their past misadventures in the competition.

The result was a comprehensive win for the Caps, despite a few nervy moments early on, and featured the ultimate meme: a goal from Russell Teibert. We’ve now earned another century of him starting, congrats y’all.

In all seriousness, it was a standout performance from Ryan Raposo, who was elusive and created a goal and scored one of his own. For a guy who has had some bad luck and struggled to get meaningful minutes, one hopes this showing from Raposo will allow him to keep building on what has been a pretty solid season this far.

The win earns the Caps a date with Cavalry FC, who has obviously been a bugaboo (the less said about 2019 the better). In a season shaping up to fall short of expectations, the club has a chance to put some emphasis on the Voyageurs Cup, as it’s the most doable silverware in a season where even the MLS sides are pretty darn gettable.

Meanwhile, in the realm of sentences I didn’t think I’d be writing, the Caps are reportedly interested in acquiring Giorgio Chiellini, who is out of contract with Juventus at the end of the season.

LAFC appears to be the front-runner here but The Athletic is reporting Vancouver are also interested. The LAFC deal would be TAM level which you would think means the Caps would be targeting him on a similar deal.

Centerback play has been uneven this year for Vancouver, though it is not certain that injecting a 38-year-old into the mix will help improve matters.

Still, there is little conceivable downside to this — Chiellini would certainly add a winning mentality to the club and would be a nice piece for key matches, though it’s unlikely he’d be a nailed on starter at this stage.

Plus his arrival would serve the ultimate purpose: shutting up a small but strange subsection of the fan base who think the Caps need to sign “big names” (whatever that means) to show their ambition. You know the types if you’ve spent time on Twitter. It’s doubtful any of them are reading this column but, if so, this rumor is for you.

Shameless Self Promotion

A condensed report card/match review has all the deets from the Canadian Championship victory.

Best of the Rest

In Whitecaps 2 news, the boys travel to take on the always tough North Texas SC this weekend

HFX Wanderers won their Voyageurs Cup match and will do battle against Toronto FC. Pacific/York United and Forge/CF Montreal will round things out.

The Canadian National Team will come to BC Place for a friendly against Iran in June