You understand the Whitecaps have no say in this, right? The league took this deal (and they own every club) and imposed it on every one because they got a bunch of money from Apple. There is no sense criticizing the team for it.
They used to. Everyone hates it. Even FIFA abandoned it for the most part. It governs how teams play too much. The best-of-3 is an MLS experiment for this round to make sure every team hosts one playoff game. From next round onward it is single-game knockout.
I'm glad to hear this, because on the Apple TV feed BC Place always sounds near-silent, even when you can see movement in the crowd. So I wondered how much of it is tepid fan support vs. the placement of microphones and/or acoustics. I do think it is both, though, having attended games in places like Salt Lake City and Minnesota (as well as one game in Vancouver). BC Place will never really be able to replicate the atmosphere, even with a lot of fans.
Also a big difference is that the MLS playoffs are based on league standings so a home and home series would essentially render the regular season meaningless (although I think LigaMX accounts for this somewhat by if the series is tied after both legs the higher seed wins).
I'm curious about Ryan Gauld. I believe he's currently listed as a player for Scotland's World Cup squad.
His recent call up to the Scotland national team and subsequent games played have closed the door on the possibility of Gauld playing for Canada.
The late season swoon was the beginning of the end.
I wrote this mid-October, but I actually stopped thinking it after the playoffs. So I'm a little surprised, but not floored.
I’m so sick of every Vancouver team never winning shit
I would argue the Whitecaps had average to above-average depth for MLS, actually. It's a salary-capped league after the special exceptions, so there aren't really any teams in the league that don't suffer when players are absent. Rather, the Caps' gap compared to the flagship teams was really with the higher-end talent.
