VANCOUVER, BC – The final phase of Vancouver Whitecaps FC’s busy schedule will come to an end this week as they prepare to host Montreal Impact in the second leg of the Canadian Championship semifinal on Wednesday and Minnesota United FC in MLS action on Saturday.
With the focus shifting straight to Wednesday’s semifinal, ‘Caps midfielder Russell Teibert spoke passionately this week and a common word used was “win.”
“We have to win, there is nothing else I have to say,” Teibert said. “We understand the importance of this game … we need to win for our fans, for our club, and for our morale.”
These are the types of games that you want to play in, added fellow Canadian international and experienced ‘Caps left back Marcel de Jong.
“It’s huge opportunity for us to reach the finals,” de Jong said. “A home game for our fans, it will be a big important game for us and an exciting game as a Canadian player to play in this Cup. It’s special and it will be nice if we can get a result in front of our home fans.”
Following a 1-0 defeat on the road in the first-leg against Montreal, nothing short of a victory will suffice for Robinson’s team. The ‘Caps need to win by at least two goals to progress within 90 minutes. Despite having an important game on Saturday against Minnesota, Whitecaps FC head coach Carl Robinson said the focus is to take it one game at a time this week.
“We took the game seriously, but we were also in between road trips to D.C. and Seattle,” Robinson said of last week’s first leg. “We will go in Wednesday and there will be fresh faces and we will be going out to win in it. We know we need to score two goals and I will pick a team that will be able to win by two goals.”
Robinson added that the ‘Caps need to return to the roots that made them successful over the last few seasons. Those roots are being a hard-working team that is hard to play and score against.
“Football is a basic game and we need to return to the basics,” Robinson added. “We have gone away from being hard to play against and we need to stop conceding goals. We had a long meeting after the game [on Saturday], a few home truths were told rightly or wrongly.”
