Sporting Madness

For a while, it looked like the Wesley Charles - Charles Gbeke incident had been completely settled. The Whitecaps' long break helped, and the two even took a pre-game lap of the stadium together before the team's next home match. Today, though, another incident happened and the Whitecaps immediately released Charles. Here's the press release sent out this morning by Nathan Vanstone , the Whitecaps' manager, broadcast and communications: "WHITECAPS RELEASE WESLEY CHARLES VANCOUVER, BC - Vancouver Whitecaps FC announced today that defender Wesley Charles has been released by the club. During Tuesday’s training session, Charles took exception to a tackle by fellow defender Jeff Parke and attempted to strike Parke. Charles was immediately dismissed from the grounds and training resumed. 'This is the second incident between Wesley Charles and a teammate in just over a month, and as a result, we have decided to release Charles outright,' explained Whitecaps p...

So, that was fun . The Whitecaps snapped their USL losing streak last night with a 3-2 victory [ Gary Kingston , The Vancouver Sun ] over Miami FC, but it may well prove to be a Pyrrhic one. The real story of the game was not the victory, but the fight between Whitecaps' teammates Charles Gbeke and Wesley Charles , perhaps the most ridiculous in-game feud between teammates since the Lee Bowyer / Keiron Dyer incident at Newcastle United (story from BBC News ). Compare the videos below. (Incident starts at 7:51 of the Whitecaps' clip). This is not good for the Whitecaps. In fact, it's hard to think of two players whose loss might hurt the team more (except perhaps goalkeeping legend Jay Nolly ). The Whitecaps are very short at central defence at the moment thanks to Jeff Parke 's injury (turf toe) and Justin Thompson 's sudden departure [ Marc Weber , Back of the Net ], so any suspension to Charles (which seems inevitable) will certainly hurt. Gbeke's almost ...