Vancouver, meanwhile, are publicly up for sale. The group headed by Greg Kerfoot, Steve Luczo, Jeff Mallett and Steve Nash announced in December their intentions to pass the torch, followed by more recent revelations of talks with the city about a new soccer-specific stadium of their own at the Pacific National Exhibition Fairgrounds; they are tenants at provincially-owned BC Place.
For all that, Vancouver can reasonably aspire to stand toe to toe with the star-studded Herons over these 180 minutes of play. The ‘Caps sit a nose ahead of them in the Supporters’ Shield standings (albeit on a slightly lower points-per-game pace) and both their expected and actual goal differential are tops in MLS. They have been a proactive, ball-dominant side in both MLS and CCC action despite facing a brutal string of ConcaChampions opponents in Costa Rica’s Deportivo Saprissa and Mexico’s CF Monterrey and Pumas UNAM.
“I didn’t watch them last season, but for me, it’s not a surprise,” IMCF head coach Javier Mascherano said on Wednesday. “I was watching them, and they play really well. They have very, very good players in front. They have very good wingers, strikers, good midfielders. They play together, scoring a lot of goals; they didn’t concede too many goals.
“You can find two teams that are in a good position, in a good moment, both. So hopefully, I expect my team to have a good game, trying to be narrow, trying to stop them in attack, because they are very dangerous in attack. But also we want to have the ball, we want to be the protagonist in the game.”
