Well. That happened.
The Voyageurs’ Cup tournament kicked off on Wednesday night. Vancouver have yet to win this trophy in eleven tries. They’ve been beaten outright, they’ve secured near-certain victory only to be betrayed by another team starting a reserve side and getting pummelled, they’ve had a late lead washed out by torrential downpour, clearing the way for them to lose the replay. What they hadn’t done, since the format was changed in 2011, was lose their semi-final matchup. Oh, they’d come close. Montreal, then in division 2, forced extra time at Empire Field in 2011, and Ali Gerba was inches away from winning it for them at the death. FC Edmonton scored early at BC Place last year, making the final leg interesting until Sebastien Le Toux put the game out of reach. Tonight, the Whitecaps again struggled against a division two side, but pulled out a 3-2 win to put themselves in the driver’s seat coming home next week.
It wasn’t pretty. Silviu Petrescu, the man who was bizarrely named MLS Referee of the Year for 2012, made a dog’s breakfast out of yet another Canadian Championship game. Camilo opened the scoring early on a 30-yard free kick that bounced untouched through the box and past Edmonton keeper Lance Parker. Darren Mattocks, however, had been in an offside position, and it was his feint at the ball that froze Parker, allowing the shot to trickle in. One blown call, and an undeserved 1-0 lead for the Caps. From there, Edmonton took over the half. Just two minutes after Camilo’s goal, Andy O’Brien (for what is at least the third time this season) misplayed an attempted headed clearance, putting it right onto the head of Michael Cox, who popped a header over Brad Knighton and in to tie things up. The Eddies kept coming and took the lead in the 28th minute off of a poorly defended corner. (As if there was any other kind, in Whitecaps-land.) 2-1 was the score at the half.
The second half was a very different story. Whatever Martin Rennie said to his team in the locker room (he was asked, and indicated that he was not able to repeat it on the record), it had the desired effect. FC Edmonton generated next to no offence in the second half, while Vancouver hemmed them in their own end for minutes at a time. Parker had to make a number of saves off of on-target headers, but Vancouver still struggled to find a really Grade A chance. In the 82nd minute, Vancouver finally broke through courtesy of referee Silviu Petrescu. I’ve seen some weak penalties called by awful referees since I started following the Caps, but I don’t think I’ve seen a weaker penalty call or a referee as bad as Petrescu. Camilo (who doesn’t dive nearly as much as people think) broke into the Edmonton area, and was bumped off the ball by an Edmonton defender. The replay shows that there is some contact, hip to hip, which might be enough for a penalty, though Camilo did appear to hit the deck a little too easily. The big problem is that the ball, by the time the contact occurred, was completely unplayable. Camilo had tried to poke it past the defender, and the ball had nearly gone over the end line before he was knocked to the ground. The penalty was given, however, and I can see only two possible reasons why. The first, and most plausible, is that Petrescu is an absolutely terrible ref and shouldn’t be permitted to officiate above U14 until he develops even an iota of judgement. The second, and this is less plausible because it assumes that Petrescu’s decisions are more accurate than a coin flip, is that the referee realized he had missed an actual penalty minutes early when Jordan Harvey was legitimately tripped up in the area, and decided to atone for his mistake.
Wow, that was quite the rant. If you’re still with me here, Camilo converted the penalty, Edmonton coach Colin Miller got ejected from the game for presumably uttering the words that the little voice in Silviu Petrescu’s head has been whispering to the appalling referee ever since he first picked up a whistle. (Ok, maybe the rant wasn’t quite over.) Tom Heinemann scored a late goal, the first Vancouver tally to be completely without controversy, and the game ended 3-2 for the visitors.
It was a win on the road, and that’s about the only positive I’ll take from it. Martin Rennie said that he rested players last weekend in anticipation of this game. If the plan was to blow them out of the water so the reserves could clean up the remains at home in a week’s time, the plan didn’t work. I’ve been a staunch defender of Rennie, even when he’s taken heat in recent games, but I have to admit to some confusion now. The lineup that played against Dallas could hardly have done much worse against Edmonton than the squad that played tonight did in the first half. Why rest Daigo Kobayashi (who was apparently feeling the strain of North American travel) on Saturday, then play him two games in four nights? Why, through eight games, have we played eight different forward combinations? Why would you give the likes of Matt Watson his first game of the year against the best team in MLS when you could play a superior player in Texas, giving the Caps a better chance to win, and have Watson ready to go against Edmonton where his hustle might count for more? The poor performance in Dallas seemed like an aberration this season. Vancouver had been competitive in every match they’d played up to that point. Then they came out flat against a team they should have straight-up dominated and were lucky not to head home for the second leg down a goal. Rennie’s made a ton of positive changes to this club, and he’s a long, long, LONG way from having to worry about his job, but there’s no room to screw around in the Canadian Championship, and not much in MLS’ tough Western Conference. Let’s hope Rennie’s half-time speech has some lasting effects.