Canadian Championship: Either ghosts or glory await the Vancouver Whitecaps at Starlight Stadium (2023)

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Around the same time that the Vancouver Whitecaps were touching down at YVR and CEO Axel Schuster was opening up his UberEATS app, Pacific FC’s players, staff, fans and owners were marauding through Downtown Victoria on a merry and tippled purple-powered celebration tour.

The exact details of that night in August 2021 will remain confidential, suffice it to say “they went late,” a grinning Tridents coach James Merriman said Tuesday.

The party’s abundance of pure joy was on par with the magnitude of the Canadian Premier League team’s accomplishment — knocking out Major League Soccer’s Whitecaps, 4-3, in the Canadian Championship.

Those Pacific players who had been dismissed and discarded by MLS clubs and/or their academies wrought delicious vengeance, and helped cement the CPL as a legitimate, quality league. It was also a springboard for the club, vaulting them into the province’s mainstream consciousness, and sparking their rocket-ship ride to the top of the CPL, where they became the only club not named Forge FC to win the league title.

As much of a springboard as the Ferryside Derby was for Pacific, the scars it left on the Whitecaps were deep. It cost Marc Dos Santos, who had lost at home the previous year to CPL side Cavalry FC, his job. Those fans already jaded and tired by the club’s MLS mediocrity melted away. Outside observers, looking down from their lofty aeries in media or league offices, took it as proof of what they viewed as the Whitecaps’ lack of ambition.

The Caps see ghosts at Starlight Stadium. Pacific see echoes of glory. And whatever happens Wednesday when the two teams meet again in the semifinals of the quest for the Voyageurs Cup, neither will fade.

NEXT GAME

Vancouver Whitecaps vs. Pacific FC

Canadian Championship Semifinal

7 p.m. Wednesday, Starlight Stadium, Langford

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TV: OneSoccer.

As much as this is a new game, with new faces, and years removed from their first meeting, the storylines remain the same. There are still hungry and driven Pacific players who still feel aggrieved by being cast off or overlooked by MLS clubs. The geographical proximity of the two teams means there is much shared connective tissue — like Merriman, who coached the Caps’ youth sides for six years.

The Whitecaps are still battling for big-league relevance and market share in Vancouver, but come into the game as the massive and overwhelming paper favourites. Their $12,746,625 wage bill for 2023 — while 23rd out of 29 MLS teams — makes it a race akin to a Bugatti versus a Honda Civic. Caps midfielder Ryan Gauld, who will make $2.5 million in 2023, earns more than double the $1.2 million CPL salary cap of Pacific — and that’s not just player wages. That’s technical and training staff remuneration, housing and residential rewards.

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And there was no stooping to a ferry ride for this group of football bourgeoisie — the Caps chartered a plane to Victoria on Tuesday afternoon, while the rest of the proletariat rabble dealt with Tsawwassen traffic jams and mysteriously shuttered Pacific Buffets.

But which side will have more motivation: the one haunted by ghosts or the one hunting glory?

“It’s definitely different than the first time around because we know how they (Whitecaps) left the pitch that night … That’s not going to be forgotten,” said Merriman. “Not only are they the defending champions, but they’re going to be incredibly motivated because of that result last time at Starlight.

“But I still don’t think that that takes anything away from the motivation in our group, and the motivation from players that were at academies across the country that never got a look or still believe that they deserve another look, which is really what drove us in the first game.”

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From Terran Campbell’s eight-minute penalty kick, to skilful strikes from Manny Aparicio and Josh Heard — both of whom are still with Pacific — the Tridents never trailed in 2021, with a final-whistle penalty kick from Cristian Dajome making the score line a little less embarrassing.

Caps coach Vanni Sartini, then the Whitecaps’ U-23 manager and director of methodology, didn’t make the trip to Victoria for that fateful night in 2021. He was back in Vancouver, coaching the second unit and some first-stringers who didn’t travel in an exhibition game against a local league team. He followed along on his phone, and while he was surprised when Pacific struck first, he remained confident — more so after Gauld’s tying goal.

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“I remember thinking to myself, ‘OK, now we tied, it’s gonna be OK.’ And then you see the 2-1, the 3-2, the 4-2 … And so it was like a moment of, ‘OK, it’s one of those days that can happen in soccer.’ Let’s try not to repeat that kind of day tomorrow,” he said.

“I think once their team will be motivated, maybe they will have an extra motivation because they are, ‘quote unquote,’ the smaller team against the MLS team. But our task is to match their intensity from Minute 1, because if we don’t do it, then the game is going to become highly complicated.”

Last year, the Caps beat all comers — MLS and CPL alike — on their way to winning the Cup, their first silverware as a team since 2015. They crave that winning feeling again, and come into the game well-rested and in form, after topping the then-West-leading Seattle Sounders last week at B.C. Place. They sent four second-half goals past York United to win their first Canadian Championship game of the season earlier this month.

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The Tridents, second in the CPL standings, dropped four goals on both Atletico Ottawa and York United before drawing with Valour 1-1 last weekend. But they had left starters Amer Didic, Thomas Meilleur-Giguère, Aparicio and Heard at home for that fixture to rest, prepare and focus for Wednesday’s game.

“I think they are gonna come with an intensity that is going to be over the roof,” said Sartini. “They can see that this game is even bigger than the (2021) game because the other game was a quarterfinal. This game gives you the chance to host the final of the Canadian Championship in your place.”

The winner of this game will host the victor of Forge vs. CF Montreal, who play Wednesday (4 p.m., OneSoccer) at Saputo Stadium.

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Pacific dispatched Calgary on penalties in the preliminary round, then cut short the Cinderella run of TSS Rovers in the quarterfinals two weeks ago, scoring two late goals in a 2-0 win.

This small, Vancouver Island club is no longer a naïf; it’s battle-hardened. They came up short in 2021’s tournament with a 2-1 loss to Toronto in the semis, but impressed. Their CPL title also booked them a ticket to the Concacaf Champions League for the first time.

Against a very good CS Herediano team, they lost 1-0 on an 83rd-minute goal at home, but went to Estadio Eladio Rosabal Cordero in Costa Rica full of fight. Playing with 10 men for most of the second half, Gianni dos Santos found the winner in the 89th minute to send the tie to penalties, where Los Florenses squeaked out a nail-biting 6-5 victory.

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When they sent the upstart semi-pro Rovers home on May 10, it was a game they expected to win, as the dominating favourites, but the game wasn’t decided until Adonijah Reid’s 87th-minute score made sure Heard’s self-admitted soft penalty stood up as the winner.

But Wednesday night, to quote Qui-Gone Jinn: “There’s always a bigger first.” Pacific will be the minnows, the Whitecaps the whales.

“It was a great storyline for TSS, especially their results against Valour, and the way that they played in that match,” said Merriman. “They came here and they gave us a game, and now it’s our job to do the same against an MLS side as a CPL side. That’s … Cup competition.

“We’ve never had that here in Canada that where people can get behind it and create these storylines. You always have to watch the FA Cup or watch European leagues to get into Cup competition, and now we have it in our own backyard.”

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jadams@postmedia.com

twitter.com/TheRealJJAdams

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