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In 15 seasons, the Whitecaps have never had a season start like this. And their success is down to their backups aligning with their stars
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You don’t know what you don’t know. And Jesper Sorensen didn’t know he didn’t have a bench to rely on.
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At least that was the prevailing sentiment about the Vancouver Whitecaps coming into 2025. A team with a good core, but a paper-thin bench. Thinner than Christian Bale in The Machinist. Less depth than a DC superhero movie.
“The good thing for me is that I didn’t know the players, so I didn’t know that we didn’t have a bench,” he said with a twinkle in his eye after training earlier this week.
But every time a player has gone down with an injury, or been allowed some bench time to recuperate in this frenetic start to the season, their backups have come in and succeeded.
MLS SuperDraft pick Tate Johnson, in his debut start, scored in the Whitecaps’ 2-0 win over CF Montreal Saturday night at B.C. Place. The rookie got the start because Sam Adekugbe went down with an injury two games ago. His replacement on the back line, Édier Ocampo, was suspended for Saturday’s game after a retroactive red card assessed by MLS DisCo this week.
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In their mid-week CONCACAF Champions Cup game against Monterrey, centreback Belal Halbouni scored an 87th minute equalizer. The second-year centreback has just two starts and three appearances in league play, though his performances in Cup play have been impressive.
The Whitecaps’ bench will now be severely tested. Ryan Gauld went down 23 minutes into Saturday’s game after suffering a non-contact knee injury. He had to be helped by two staffers off the field, then past an applauding supporters’ section into the tunnel. The severity of his injury will be determined after post-game testing.
Vancouver was already without Adekugbe and the revelatory Jayden Nelson, who came off five minutes into the Monterrey game with a hamstring strain. He’s day to day, and questionable for the return leg of the Cup clash in Mexico.
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With Johnson and Matias Laborda — who scored his first of the season against Montreal — eight different players have scored for Vancouver, across all competitions this season, further smashing that erroneous assessment of a shallow roster.
The Whitecaps have actually accomplished something never done in their MLS history — win three straight games to start the season. Vancouver and the Philadelphia Union are the only teams to win all three of their games to kick off 2025.
The team’s defence has given up just two goals in three league games this season, and had shutouts in two of their last three. Goalkeeper Yohei Takaoka made a point-blank save on Montreal striker Prince Owusu late in the second half, and got some luck when an shot caromed off the crossbar and out to keep the game scoreless.
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