Whitecapsfanblog

Since Greg Kerfoot has taken over the club, the Whitecaps have made one smart decision after the next.  Bobby Lenarduzzi and Kerfoot have made quite a team and have done everything right.   The most recent decision to leave the USL-1, however,  has me scratching my head.  For once, it is not clear to me the Whitecaps have done the right thing.

The Vancouver Whitecaps and other USL-1 clubs which form the Team Owners Association (TOA) have now left the United Soccer League’s first division to go it alone in a new league.  This group includes the Montreal Impact, the Carolina Railhawks, Miami FC, the Atlanta Silverbacks, the Minnesota Thunder and a yet-to-exist St. Louis team.  These teams are in the process of forming a league of their own.

At first glance, the new proposed league looks less than impressive.  In the first place, there were stories surfacing that the Minnesota Thunder was on the verge of collapse, their  players  out of contract.  The Atlanta Silverbacks did not field a team in USL-1 at all last year.  St Louis never even had a team.

Meanwhile, we fans face the prospect of not playing teams we have thoroughly enjoyed watching over the years such as Rochester, Puerto Rico and fierce rival Portland.  We will also miss out on the revival of the team we beat in the  1979 Soccer Bowl, the Tampa Bay Rowdies.  The standard of play in the USL-1 has been consistently improving over the years, as the recent performance of the Puerto Rico Islanders and the Montreal Impact in the CONCACAF Champions League has demonstrated. There is no point in trying to put a positive spin on this: as a fan I am disappointed and disheartened by this.  I fail to see how next year is going to be as good as the years we have spent in USL-1.

There are so many unanswered questions for the fan.  For one, while I understand the TOA wanted more say in the league, exactly what were they looking for?  What were the offers and counter-offers which were made in the negotiations between USL-1 and the TOA?  What was the issue which could not be agreed upon, or were there a number of such issues?   Why are the Portland Timbers, who will go to the MLS with the Whitecaps in 2011,  content to stay in USL-1 while the Whitecaps felt they had to leave?     If the Whitecaps are going to the MLS in 2011, why do they care so much about one more year in the USL-1?  If the Impact hope to join the MLS why do they care so much?   If the Whitecaps and the Impact leave the new league for the MLS, where will this leave Miami, Minnesota, Atlanta, St Louis and Carolina?  To this last question there appears to be no answer at all that I can think of.

All of these questions lead me to speculate that there is more going on than meets the eye.  Perhaps the Whitecaps had hoped to keep a team in USL-1 as a farm team for their MLS franchise  and could not agree to terms.   To the fan it is all very unsettling and confusing.

As a fan I had looked forward to seeing if the Whitecaps could finally win the points race in their last year in the USL-1.   It now looks as though they will be playing in what is an inferior league.

I was hoping that cooler heads would prevail and that a deal would be made.  I know we are marching on to greater things in the MLS, but I was hoping we would go out of the USL-1 with a bang in 2010, not a whimper.   We long-time fans deserve better than this.  I can only hope that both the TOA and the USL-1 will come to their senses and refocus on a deal.   Both sides seem to have negotiated their way to the worst case scenario, a split into two inferior leagues, with the result being loss of value to the fans of all of the teams involved.

Like I said, as a long time fan I am scratching my head, and for the first time since Greg Kerfoot took over, the Whitecaps appear to have got it wrong.