Sporting Madness

Canada’s two USSF-2 teams start their playoff campaigns this week with home-and-home series. Montreal got off on the right foot Wednesday, beating the Austin Aztex 2-0 thanks to an Ali Gerba brace . Meanwhile, Vancouver will face their long-time rivals from Portland in a two-game series starting tonight at Swangard Stadium (10:30 p.m. Eastern: I’ll be live-blogging from the stadium press box, and the game can be seen via streaming video at whitecapsfc.com ). Both teams are in slightly different situations, but they have some of the same concerns and will face some of the same challenges. For Montreal, putting the ball in the net consistently has been an issue for most of the year. Gerba was solid down the stretch run, scoring nine goals in his last seven regular-season games , but he didn’t score at all in the regular season before that. The Impact weren’t able to find much scoring depth, either, and their depth hasn’t shown up much at all lately. The 2-0 home win was a terrific st...

After a month-long road trip, the Vancouver Whitecaps completed their odyssey with a return to Burnaby’s Swangard Stadium. Unlike certain Greek mythological heroes, though, their return was less than triumphal, and they came away with just one point from a 2-2 draw with the Austin Aztex. Whitecaps’ head coach Teitur Thordarson was impressed with his team’s play overall, but less pleased with their finishing touch. “We created so many chances today, it is unbelievable we didn’t score more than two goals,” he said. “We could have been up 4-0 by half.” Vancouver opened the scoring in the 16th minute when Martin Nash went in for a sliding tackle. The ball went off him and bounced to Cornelius Stewart , who broke in alone and drilled a low left-footed drive past keeper Miguel Gallardo into the bottom-right corner of the net. The Whitecaps dominated much of the rest of the first half, recording six shots against Austin’s two and controlling the majority of the possession. They we...

After another month-long road trip, the Vancouver Whitecaps return home today [ Simon Fudge , WhitecapsFC.com ] to face the Austin Aztex [ Benjamin Massey , Eighty-Six Forever ] in a game I'll be live-blogging. It will be their first match at home in almost five weeks [ Marc Weber , The Province ]. Their last home fixture was a 1-1 draw against Minnesota all the way back on July 25 . The team went 2-0-3 on their month-long road trip, picking up wins at Montreal and Minnesota and earning draws with Carolina, St. Louis and Tampa Bay. They've also undergone quite the roster makeover in that time [ Bruce Constantineau , Vancouver Sun : I focused on the reasons behind that in my World Soccer Reader column a few weeks back , but the changes have come even faster and on a wider scale than I would have imagined. We should see some of the new faces in the lineup today; Weber expects 19-year-old Swiss forward Ridge Mobulu to start, with 22-year-old American striker Cody Arnoux ...

Join me in the live blog below! Vancouver Whitecaps - Austin Aztex

A quick note that I'll be live-blogging both tonight's Vancouver Whitecaps - Austin Aztex match (8:30 p.m. Eastern/5:30 p.m. Pacific, usllive.com) and tomorrow's Toronto FC - Chivas USA match (7:30 p.m. Eastern/4:30 p.m. Pacific, GolTV). Join me here or at The 24th Minute for either or both!