The Vancouver Whitecaps host Real Salt Lake on Saturday in a regular-season opener between clubs who like their chances to make playoff inroads against flashier Western Conference counterparts.
Salt Lake have earned the Western Conference’s seventh and final playoff spot in back-to-back seasons despite enduring an unplanned coaching change and a team sale.
Last year they also weathered the nearly season-long absence of 2021 leading scorer Damir Kreilach, who is now healthy.
With that track record, manager Pablo Mastroeni says the team mentality is extremely strong. And the former U.S. national team and MLS midfielder says that’s the most important thing in the parity-driven league.
“It’s really the mindset of the group,” Mastroeni told DJ & PK on Salt Lake’s KSL radio. “And I think if that part is right, then I think everything else kind of falls into place. The expectations coming into camp I think is where we should start, because I think from your expectations, it’s either going to lead to disappointments or happiness, really.”
Vancouver also has visions of upsetting the pecking order of a conference that includes defending MLS Champions LAFC and Concacaf Champions League winners, the Seattle Sounders.
The Whitecaps were the darlings of MLS two seasons ago with their late surge into the postseason under midseason managing appointment Vanni Sartini.
Now entering his third season as manager and fifth overall as a coach at the club, Sartini is also heartened by the additions the club made last summer, even though they didn’t result in a second consecutive playoff berth.
The arrival of holding midfielder Andres Cubas in the late spring and wingback Julian Gressel in the summer were important pieces to an improved second half. And the Whitecaps won three of their last four to finish in ninth place and only four points back of Salt Lake.
“This is by far the strongest team that we have had at least in the five years that I have been here,” Sartini said. “We didn’t have to move too many pieces in, because we considered the guys that we brought in the middle of the season last year like new signings, and we only needed like two or three players.”
–Field Level Media
