There are several ways to measure Vancouver Whitecaps FC’s advancement since Axel Schuster arrived from German giants Schalke 04 to take up sporting director duties in November of 2019.
One can mark VWFC’s painstaking progress in simple statistical terms. The club that finished dead last in the Western Conference and 23rd of 24 in the overall MLS table a few weeks before Schuster’s hiring with an 8W-16L-10D record has now qualified for the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs four of the last five seasons, winning four consecutive Canadian Championships along the way.
Then there’s the aesthetic improvement from the cautious, attritional style that marked Marc Dos Santos’ tenure to the counterattacking verve of Vanni Sartini’s time as head coach, and now their irresistibly assertive possession play under first-year boss Jesper Sorensen.
“It was a step-by-step approach, and it was always about making this team better,” Schuster explained to MLSsoccer.com on Tuesday, as he and the ‘Caps prepared for Saturday’s championship bout against Inter Miami CF at Chase Stadium. “And not really thinking like the ultimate of a team that can make it to an MLS Cup final. I think we always, as a club, have only thought about the next step.
“We have focused only on the next squad, and the next improvements.”
Müller made the call
Really, though, the highest compliment anyone could pay the Whitecaps’ reinvention came from Thomas Müller. The German legend scanned the galaxy of clubs around the world where he could continue his storied career after a quarter-century at Bayern Munich, and – despite much bigger financial offers and more glamorous settings available – decided VWFC was his place to be.
“If you’ve watched the Vancouver Whitecaps this season and their development over the last few years, there is a chance to win titles, not only this year but also next year,” Müller told reporters when he was unveiled in August.
“They showed me their ideas, their plans, and I felt quite comfortable from the beginning. Vancouver is already known globally as one of the best cities in the world, which is important, but the main part for me was the football on the pitch.”
In stark contrast to the ‘LA, New York or Miami’ stereotype often associated with superstar arrivals in MLS, Müller researched his options in depth. He was wowed by the Whitecaps’ displays in their underdog run to the Concacaf Champions Cup final, and their subsequent ability to shake off the agony of that 5-0 loss to Cruz Azul and climb back into the Supporters’ Shield race despite a raft of injuries and international call-ups.
“First and foremost, Thomas Müller wanted to come and play here,” marveled owner Jeff Mallett.
“He found us.”
Bang for their buck
At the heart of those inspiring performances: Years of roster work by Schuster and an analytics staff that he considers one of MLS’s elite, fused with the elevating effect of first-year head coach Jesper Sørensen’s expert guidance. All of it executed on a budget that, even after Müller’s arrival, ranked 17th of 30 MLS clubs in guaranteed salary compensation according to MLS Players Association documents.
“We always said we need a good mixture,” explained Schuster. “We need a few key players that are also good as leaders on the pitch, who can help [in]experienced players – young players or not, experienced players can be both – and are our skeleton for everything.
“Then we have to add some overseen players, some players who maybe had a dip in their career, and some young talent with a high ceiling, but very little experience.”
Scan the starting XI that beat San Diego FC in Saturday’s Western Conference Final, and you’ll see the variety of methods used.
At the tip of the spear is Brian White, a 2018 SuperDraft pick of the New York Red Bulls traded to Vancouver in 2021 for $400,000 in General Allocation Money plus incentives; the 80 goals he’s since scored across all competitions suggest that fee was quite a bargain. At the other end of the pitch stands goalkeeping mainstay Yohei Takaoka, quietly signed in 2023 from Yokohama F. Marinos of Japan’s J.League, to this day an under-the-radar market in MLS.
Further down the spine, the presence of Müller and Andrés Cubas, a Paraguayan international with a very good chance of taking part in next summer’s FIFA World Cup, underlines the value of savvy Designated Player signings. Yet their impact is magnified by the presence of breakout box-to-box star Sebastian Berhalter, acquired from the Columbus Crew in 2022 for a baseline of $50,000 in GAM, the lowest amount MLS regulations allow to be included in a trade.
Winger Ali Ahmed is today a Canadian international on the radar of big European clubs. But he was largely unknown when he joined VWFC’s system five years ago, a Toronto native who’d roamed across Europe as a teenager in search of his big break, living in hostels as he unsuccessfully trialed at clubs in Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands and England.
On the opposite flank is Emmanuel Sabbi, an Italian-Ghanaian attacker whose family emigrated to Ohio when he was a child. Sabbi built some buzz in his adolescence as a United States youth international, particularly at the 2017 FIFA U-17 World Cup, but had toiled in relative obscurity in Spain, Denmark and France before Vancouver acquired him last winter.
Success stories like these are vital given the value in MLS of developing domestic players, which in Vancouver’s case includes both Canadians and Yanks. While many of their US-based counterparts can quickly attain the residency status that removes foreign players from international roster slots, Canada’s naturalization process runs much longer.
“Most of the American markets can convert the player into a domestic player in one year, and give him a green card. And so the value of an international spot is for us way higher,” said Schuster. “We cannot build a roster with 11 players that are not eligible for Canada and US like some other teams have – and that's fine, every approach is fine, but our approach has to be different.”
Faith in youth
The Whitecaps have also been more adept than most with the Under-22 initiative, most notably with Pedro Vite. The Ecuadorian central midfielder powered the spring's CCC push before moving to Pumas UNAM in a transfer reportedly worth around $6 million plus a sell-on clause, VWFC’s second-most lucrative return on investment behind the landmark sale of Alphonso Davies to Bayern.
Rising Peru international Kenji Cabrera was immediately signed to fill his place, a like-for-like move within the VWFC “matrix,” as Schuster calls it. The German CSO also learned the value of investing in ‘player care,’ shorthand for the support structure that helps squad members feel at home and focus on their craft.
“You often are so quick in adding a significant amount to an offer, but then you're shy of maybe spending, let's say, a couple thousand in helping him to settle in, to have the right setup,” Schuster noted. “Is this language courses? Is this even life and market education, because some players are coming from a totally different world and need to understand what this market is about? Is this supporting them with maybe cooking?
“We had players who lived solely in the household of their parents, and you let them come here and you think they can manage all of this in a second, alone? No, it's not so.”
SuperDraft success
Vancouver have also drafted intelligently, and reaped some homegrown talent from a sweeping youth affiliate network which spans much of Canada. Yet Ralph Priso might just be the quintessential Whitecaps success story.
A prized youth product of cross-Canadian rivals Toronto FC who got lost in the shuffle there, bounced to Colorado in a 2023 trade and eventually landed in British Columbia as a bargain pickup, Priso was a rotation piece at center mid until an injury crisis befell the ‘Caps defense over the summer.
With few other options, Sorensen gave the now-23-year-old a look at center back, and he proved a quick study, anchoring a defensive renaissance and keeping European veterans Joedrick Pupe and Sebastian Schonlau on the bench.
Player development
Priso is one of many ‘Caps who’ve enjoyed marked individual improvements under Sorensen, several of them in new or adjusted roles. That has vindicated the initially controversial decision to part ways with the charming, charismatic Vanni Sartini.
“We had Vanni, and we were successful. We were making the playoffs every year with being a bottom-three spender in this league,” said Schuster. “So one thing was really to get some fresh energy in, to get a different view on things, to really, I would say, create some creative chaos, positive chaos like, ‘Oh, no one is sure about his role anymore. Everyone has to prove himself again, because there's a new coach, and you cannot rely on everything that happened.’
“The other thing was, whoever we speak with as a coach has to have a record of making players better. And Jesper had that.”
Müller’s leadership, intelligence and attacking incision has proven influential; “he's really helped take us an extra step,” club captain Ryan Gauld, who lost most of this season to a knee injury, noted to MLSsoccer.com in San Diego. Yet the German himself has noted he’s more of a finishing touch than a foundational element.
"We do it all together in each direction,” said Schuster, “and that’s Thomas’ style. It was always his style to be a relational player, somebody who finds the space and gives the space to his teammates, and somebody who understands way well, also against the ball, where everyone has to be positioned and gives direction and advice to everyone … That's actually what our team needed to be better.”
Data driven
All of this is a credit to a long-term construction project by Schuster and VWFC’s crack staff of number-crunchers.
“I can tell you that in every expense category, we are bottom three in this league, but not in data analytics,” Schuster revealed. “In data analytics, we are pretty high in this league; we're in the top third. And because it's by conviction, but it also mirrors a little bit the background of a lot of people in our ownership group who have come from the tech business, made their money in software, or Jeff Mallett, for example, at Yahoo.”
The initial focus was on using technology to maximize scouting efforts for a club that faces long-haul flights for every away match save their Cascadia brethren in Seattle and Portland, let alone the time and cost to visit Europe or points further afield.
Over time, VWFC’s data model became increasingly central to all aspects, recruitment and performance alike.
“Our average flight time to games is three and a half hours. That's our average flight time!” said Schuster. “We need to be able to rotate. We have to have depth, because with this amount of travel, we have to have more fresh legs.
“It is for us very normal that we arrive [home from a road trip] at 3 am in the night, and the next day is off, and the next day is matchday-1. So that actually helped us.”
Puzzle complete
In sum, they’ve produced a team that transcended the grueling effects of a marathon season with multiple fronts – and this is a club which already regularly racks up the most travel in the league, thanks to their location at the northwestern edge of a massive continent – while executing Sorensen’s bold brand of organized, attractive soccer.
“This group is special in so many ways: the discipline, the ability and the willingness to learn, and try to all the time help teammates out and be unselfish,” Sorensen said after the win over San Diego.
“It's quite unique from what I've experienced, even though I've experienced very good groups before. It's been unbelievable for me to come in and take over this group, and also means huge credit for the persons who created this group before I came in.”
