After last week’s historic win over Cascadia rival Seattle Sounders FC, it was a foregone conclusion that Sunday’s afternoon match against the Chicago Fire was going to be somewhat of a letdown. Even those around the team worried about Whitecaps FC perhaps not giving the last-place Fire enough respect. “More nervous than last week,” tweeted team ambassador Carl Valentine through his @CarlTwoOne Twitter account. “The team really needs to focus and we will get the job done.”
The game on Sunday, then, lived up to expectations, with the Caps sleepwalking through much of the first half. Don’t believe me? Check the highlights below: there’s not a single play shown between kickoff and the 42nd minute. There were a couple of early chances, but they were both for Chicago. A hand ball missed by the officials allowed Fire forward Chris Rolfe a glorious chance in close, but Whitecaps keeper Brad Knighton continued his recent strong play with a goal line stand. In fact, he would throw 92 minutes and 50 seconds of clean sheet at Chicago before they broke the shutout with mere seconds left in stoppage time.
More after the jump.
Camilo da Silva Sanvezzo opened the scoring in the 66th minute, running onto a Brad Knighton goal kick before slotting a low shot past Fire keeper Paolo Tornaghi. It was the 100th goal in Whitecaps MLS history — a fitting coup for the diminutive Camilo, who has scored 29 of them in his three seasons with the club. He would add another goal five minutes later on a wonderful pass from 18-year-old rookie Kekuta Manneh. Manneh himself then added a third goal for the Whitecaps in the 84th minute.
With the win, Vancouver leapfrogs a couple of teams to sit in third place in the Western Conference and fourth overall in the MLS. The Caps remain the sole team in the MLS to be unbeaten at home this season. Camilo, for his part, now owns the MLS scoring lead outright with 12 goals on the season — a nice middle finger to flip at voters across the league, who mysteriously chose not to select him for first team all-star despite his stellar play this year.
The only real down point of the second half was that Chicago goal that came with 10 seconds left in stoppage time. The Whitecaps back four allowed the Fire to put together three successive strikes down low in the 93rd minute; one glanced off the woodwork, but the last one — the game’s final touch of the ball — found net to ruin Knighton’s bid for a third clean sheet in four games.
Whitecaps FC hit the road next weekend, visiting the LA Galaxy on Saturday, July 20 at 7:30pm. The next home game is a week later, July 27 at 4pm against the Philadelphia Union.
What about those highlights, you ask? You got ’em. But first, howzabout a shot of Pucked in the Head cohort Chris Withers (@Chris_Withers) and Whitecaps FC forward Gershon Koffie (@Gersh28koffie) after the match? One is wearing a Ghanaian national team jersey. The other is Ghanaian-born. You can figure out which is which.
So, yeah. Those highlights: