Soccer <\/p>\n
Yachts and ferries dock daily just a few hundred meters from BC Place, where they play home matches on False Creek in the heart of downtown. Yet even for a profoundly oceangoing city like theirs, Vancouver Whitecaps FC<\/a> currently find themselves in uncharted waters.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n The \u2018Caps are the toast of MLS, topping both the Supporters\u2019 Shield and Western Conference standings with a 6W-1L-2D record (20 points) in league play, and are 180 minutes away from the 2025 Concacaf Champions Cup<\/a> final as they prepare to host Inter Miami CF<\/a> in Thursday night\u2019s semifinal first leg (10:30 pm ET | FS1, OneSoccer; TUDN, ViX).<\/p>\n Flashing a composed, methodical possession style and remarkable collective resilience, VWFC are far and away North American soccer\u2019s most surprising storyline of the year to date, all the more so with their captain and top talent Ryan Gauld<\/a> sidelined by a knee injury.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n How did all this happen? Jesper S\u00f8rensen sounds almost as amazed about it as everyone else.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, that’s a very good question,\u201d Vancouver\u2019s unassuming first-year head coach told MLSsoccer.com with a fleeting smile on Thursday. \u201cAnd you know, it’s actually not that easy to answer, to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n The Dane has been on the job for barely three months, having been hired very late in the offseason, just a few weeks before their season opener, a ConcaChampions visit to Costa Rica\u2019s Deportivo Saprissa. He arrived with zero professional experience on this side of the Atlantic and only a modest \u2013 albeit quite helpful, in his view \u2013 firsthand exposure to the region, via a 2018-19 stint in Toronto while his wife, Pernille, an oncologist, conducted research there.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you start out like I\u2019ve done in a completely new place, with a squad and a roster of players that you don’t really know that well beforehand, and you don’t know the competition, and you don’t know the opponents, then you can only hope for stuff like that,\u201d S\u00f8rensen continued.<\/p>\n \u201cYou cannot plan for it. What you can do is try to do whatever you can to get the players to buy into what your ideas are, and then the way you would like to play, and then, of course, try to prepare yourself as best possible to what will come.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2014 Vancouver Whitecaps FC (@WhitecapsFC) April 21, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n S\u00f8rensen knows knocking off two of LIGA MX\u2019s biggest heavyweights, CF Monterrey and Pumas UNAM, in consecutive rounds of CCC is exceedingly rare, even \u201chaving the football gods on our side sometimes,\u201d particularly with both second legs taking place on Mexican soil, at altitude, following 1-1 first-leg draws in Vancouver.<\/p>\n The latter of those upsets was truly remarkable<\/a>, the \u2018Caps absorbing a gut punch in the form of Pumas striker Ignacio Pussetto\u2019s 88th-minute goal, seemingly the series winner, before digging deep to conjure up heroics of their own via Tristan Blackmon<\/a>\u2019s sensational injury-time strike in Mexico City.<\/p>\n Even more extraordinarily, they flew home and dismantled Austin FC<\/a> 5-1<\/a> at BC Place three days later.<\/p>\n \u201cI’m amazed about the players\u2019 performances, because I think it is not normal and I think everybody who’s been to Mexico City and played there, and had to run, knows what it’s about. It’s difficult,\u201d said S\u00f8rensen. \u201cIt was a great physical, mental effort to be able to come up with a comeback. The game itself, I was not that happy with, but that’s just me being a coach, I think. But that’s just how it is. But the mentality and then the physical effort, I couldn’t ask for more.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s been briefed, too, on the Whitecaps\u2019 mostly middling results in their 14-plus years in the league. That their roster spend tends to rank among MLS\u2019s lowest, and the generally bearish outlook on their 2025 prospects among pundits, many of whom looked askance at both the early departure of Designated Player Stuart Armstrong and the decision to part company with his predecessor Vanni Sartini, the club\u2019s most successful manager in their MLS era, over the winter.<\/p>\n None of that seems to have fazed him or his players, who have almost universally reached or exceeded career-best performance levels under his guidance, led by breakout stars Sebastian Berhalter<\/a>, \u00c9dier Ocampo<\/a> and Jayden Nelson<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe remarkable thing is that now it feels like the performance is consistent, first of all over several competitions, games, including travel back and forth and all of this. But it\u2019s also consistent regardless of the players that are on the pitch,\u201d said sporting director Axel Schuster.<\/p>\n \u201cWe played so many different lineups. We played young players. We play our young draft pick [Tate Johnson], 19 years old, that we just recently drafted in the SuperDraft. Everyone would expect, OK, that needs time. It feels now that there is such a strong structure that every player can perform on a similar level in the structure.\u201d<\/p>\n At this point, it\u2019s worth wondering if S\u00f8rensen\u2019s limited context has actually been a benefit rather than a shortcoming.<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew going in the season that we were kind of against the clock in the sense that we were starting really early with the Concacaf games,\u201d noted striker Brian White<\/a>, who himself had to report late to VWFC\u2019s first preseason camp in Marbella, Spain due to his participation in the US men\u2019s national team<\/a>\u2019s January camp.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone was, I think, really on top of getting down the tactics, getting down the principles that we went over a lot, during even the shorter time that I managed to get out there to Spain for the preseason. So we did a lot of the work in the film room, and I think that translated really well into the training pitch. And then everyone was really disciplined and determined to make it work on the field \u2026 We bought into a system, and I think it complements a lot of our players really, really well.\u201d<\/p>\n Deep CCC runs have often inflicted debilitating effects on MLS sides over the decades, with so much travel, so many intensely demanding games so early in the calendar. Hardly any other coaches frame such situations as a benefit rather than a burden, as S\u00f8rensen does.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is too many games, and some of them at a too high level, at a very unpleasant time of the season, to be honest. But we’ve been fortunate enough to manage the games, and also getting the team to grow within the games,\u201d he said. \u201cWe could have been beaten by one of the Mexican teams in the earlier rounds, but it also pushed us to get up to a high level, and it also pushed us to really play at high speed, play at a high pace in the games.<\/p>\n \u201cThat’s been beneficial for us so far. I know we can also still have hangovers from this tournament. But right now, it’s something that excites players and also people around the club.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Both S\u00f8rensen and Schuster are quick to point to what he inherited upon arrival: A mature, tightly-knit group who took major strides under the charismatic Sartini and were eager to make another step forward.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s a group that’s been together, at least for a number of us, for a number of years. So we’ve been able to grow together. We’ve learned from experiences together and have been able to develop together,\u201d said White, who\u2019s embraced a supersub role on several prominent occasions despite his status as the club\u2019s all-time leading MLS scorer. \u201cThere’s that camaraderie there.\u201d<\/p>\n For Schuster, recognition and respect for Sartini\u2019s contributions coexist seamlessly with the judgment that a change was needed.<\/p>\n \u201cI don’t want to say that we got complacent, but I would say we couldn’t push ourselves to the highest energy that is always needed if you’re a Vancouver, and you always come a little bit from a more team[-centered], outsider approach, and you don’t rely on one or two players who will be always your game changers,\u201d the German explained to MLSsoccer.com.<\/p>\n \u201cThe coaching change was one of the things we really wanted that he shakes everyone, that he gives everyone a new life, those who haven’t played that much a new life, because they were hoping, and went into the season with the ambition and hope to prove to the new coach that they should be starters. And some of them who were always starting, to hold them accountable to do their best and to show up in the best way to start, and also, of course, to come in with a few new, fresh ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n In a subtle shift from his freewheeling predecessor, S\u00f8rensen\u2019s system revolves around control, ideally with a mastery of possession patterns and the ensuing ability to manage a match\u2019s tempo and rhythm.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is important is that you make very tight structure, and the frame within which the players have to work in, and then you allow some freedom within that frame,\u201d he explained. \u201cFor me, football is not played by 11 players \u2013 it\u2019s played within, in between 11 players, and that’s very, very important. So you have to make players see the same thing at the same time, and that’s very difficult. That’s the most difficult part of being a coach and make a team work.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we’ve worked on every day is to see if we can get people to recognize the situations alike. So if something happens in the game, they react in the same way towards that, and that’s very, very difficult. And I think we are trying to get there still, but we have gone further ahead than I actually thought that we could in this time span.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n ???????? They keep stunning the world. ????\ufe0f pic.twitter.com\/x7IkxHcpkj<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Concacaf Champions Cup (@TheChampions) April 14, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\nCinderella story<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
Defying expectations<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
From Sartini to S\u00f8rensen<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
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