Vancouver Whitecaps FC

Team information

Inaugural season: 2011

Home field: BC Place, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Owners: Greg Kerfoot, Steve Luczo, Jeff Mallett, and Steve Nash

Team colors: Deep sea blue, Whitecaps blue, and white

Overview

The Vancouver Whitecaps FC is a professional soccer team that plays in North America’s Major League Soccer (MLS). Vancouver is a relatively new MLS team, beginning play in the 2011, but its history goes back to the 1970s and spans several now-defunct leagues. The Whitecaps name was inspired by western Canada’s geography and the city’s proximity to the Pacific Ocean and the snow-capped North Shore Mountains. Since entering the league, Vancouver has made five playoff appearances, but as of 2021, the team had yet to win an MLS championship. However, in 2015, the Whitecaps captured the Voyageurs Cup by winning the Canadian Championship, a tournament featuring the nation’s top soccer teams.

History

The sport of soccer was introduced to Canada and North America by the British in the mid-nineteenth century. By the 1890s, the first professional soccer league was formed in the United States and the first Canadian pro league was born in the 1900s. The first professional game ever played in Canada was played in Vancouver in 1910 between the Vancouver Rovers and the Calgary Callies. Soccer leagues began springing up across North America, but the sport struggled to find lasting success for much of the next century.

In 1967, an attempt was made to start a new professional soccer league—the North American Soccer League (NASL)—which began play in 1968. The Vancouver Royals were part of the NASL’s inaugural season, but the team folded after just one year. In 1973, the NASL began a period of expansion and added eight new teams over the next two years. Vancouver was awarded one of those teams in 1974. According to the Whitecaps’s website, the team’s general manager was trying to come up with a name for the franchise when he drove over Vancouver’s Lions Gate Bridge. He looked down and saw the whitecaps on the waves in Vancouver Harbor; he then looked up and noticed the white peaks of the North Shore Mountains, which serve as a scenic backdrop to the city. It was these dual images of the city that inspired the name Whitecaps.

The Vancouver Whitecaps won the 1979 NASL championship and played in the league until it folded in 1984. Two years later, the team joined the Canadian Soccer League as the Vancouver 86ers, a nod to the city’s 1886 founding and the 1986 founding of the league. Over the next two decades, the team bounced between several smaller professional leagues, eventually reacquiring the name Whitecaps in 2000.

In the late 2000s, the premier professional soccer league in North America—Major League Soccer—was looking to expand. The league had been formed in the mid-1990s to take advantage of the growing popularity of soccer after the United States hosted the 1994 FIFA World Cup. The league started out in ten US cities. In 2007 it expanded into Canada with the addition of Toronto FC.

Greg Kerfoot, who was the majority owner of the Whitecaps since the early 2000s, put together a group of investors to pay the $35 million franchise fee required to receive an MLS team. The group included tech executive Steve Luczo, former Yahoo executive Jeff Mallett, and two-time NBA Most Valuable Player Steve Nash. The Whitecaps name was kept as the new team identity, but altered to Vancouver Whitecaps FC, the FC standing for football club, a common naming convention among European teams. The team logo features three diamond shapes with one central shape overlapping the two behind it. The team name cuts through the center of the logo, dividing the top and bottom into mirroring points. The top three points are white, to symbolize snow-capped mountains, while the bottom points are light blue, symbolizing ocean waves.

As is common with most expansion teams, the Whitecaps’s first season was disappointing with just 6 wins, 10 ties, and 18 losses. However, the team turned it around in year two, posting an 11–10–13 record and making the MLS playoffs—the first Canadian team to reach the MLS postseason. Vancouver returned to the playoffs in 2014 and 2015, but failed to advance in both instances. The 2015 campaign remains the team’s best season as of 2021. The Whitecaps finished 16–5–13, good enough for third place in MLS standings.

Although the team’s MLS season ended in disappointment, Vancouver scored a victory in Canada’s annual soccer tournament known as the Canadian Championship. The tournament pits the best professional soccer teams from across the nation against each other, with the winner receiving the Voyageurs Cup. In 2015, the Whitecaps defeated the Montréal Impact to take home the Voyageurs Cup, the team’s first, and as of 2021 only, Canadian Championship title. The win also qualified Vancouver to represent Canada in the CONCACAF Champions League, a competition between the best teams in North America, Central America, and the Caribbean.

The Whitecaps finished third in the Western Conference in 2017 with a 15–7–12 record, but again failed to advance in the playoffs. After three down seasons where the team did not make the postseason, the Whitecaps returned to the playoffs in 2021, finishing the regular season with a 12–13–9 record.

Attendance at Whitecaps’s matches has been excellent since the team entered the league in 2011. Vancouver consistently ranks near the top ten in average attendance per game. The 2016 season saw Vancouver reach a club record in attendance, with an average of 22,330 fans attending each home game. The most prominent group of fans is known as the Vancouver Southsiders, a name that originated from the team’s days as the 86ers. The group formed in 1999 and sat together at the south end of the team’s old stadium. Since 2011, the Whitecaps play home games at BC Place, a stadium used to host the opening and closing ceremonies at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

Notable players

The Whitecaps’s first star player was Brazilian forward Camilo Sanvezzo who was with the team from 2011 to 2013—his only three years in MLS. Sanvezzo scored a franchise-record 22 goals in 2013 and remained the club’s leading scorer as of 2021 with 43 goals. He was named Vancouver’s player of the year in 2011 and 2013.

Chilean midfielder Pedro Morales played for Vancouver from 2014 to 2016, scoring 29 goals during that period. That places him second on the all-time franchise list of goals scored. His 22 assists were the most in team history as of 2021. He scored 10 goals and added 12 assists in his first year in Vancouver, earning him the 2014 MLS Newcomer of the Year Award. Injuries sidetracked his 2015 season and his 2016 season was marred by a series of public disagreements with his teammates. He left Vancouver after the season to return home to Chile.

Uruguayan midfielder Cristian Techera spent four seasons with the Whitecaps from 2015 to 2018, scoring 29 goals, good enough for third place on the all-time list. Colombian forward Fredy Montero played with Vancouver in 2017 and again in 2019 and 2020. He led the Whitecaps in scoring with 13 goals in 2017 and 8 goals in 2019. His 28 goals with Vancouver were fourth in the team record books as of 2021. Gambian forward Kekuta Manneh was fifth on the Whitecaps’s scoring list with 24 goals from 2013 to 2017. Forward Kei Kamara, who hails from Sierra Leone, played in Vancouver for just the 2018 season, but led the team in goals with 14.

Argentinean Matias Laba was a ferocious defender for the Whitecaps from 2014 to 2017. He was part of a stingy defense that became the cornerstone of the team’s success in the mid-2010s. Danish goalkeeper David Ousted holds the franchise mark for wins with 55 and shutouts with 42. He played in Vancouver from 2013 to 2017. Canadian goalkeeper Maxime Crépeau started 57 games for Vancouver since joining the team in 2019. He won 7 games in 2019 and 10 games in 2021, earning the team’s player of the year honors both times.

Bibliography

Crawford, Colin. “Vancouver Whitecaps FC.” Canadian Encyclopedia, 10 June 2016, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/vancouver-whitecaps. Accessed 16 Nov. 2021.

Gangué-Ruzic, Alexandre. “Designating the Best: Ranking the Top 5 DPs in the Vancouver Whitecaps’s Short MLS History.” Between the Sticks, 27 Apr. 2020, btsvancity.com/2020/04/27/designating-the-best-ranking-the-top-5-dps-in-the-vancouver-whitecapss-short-mls-history/. Accessed 18 Nov. 2021.

McDougall, Chrös. Vancouver Whitecaps FC. ABDO, 2021.

Rucker, Jael. “Major League Soccer History: How MLS Became a Big Business.” ONE37pm, 18 Feb. 2021, www.one37pm.com/strength/sports/major-league-soccer-history. Accessed 18 Nov. 2021.

Timko, Brandon. “Back in the Day: The NASL Era.” Whitecaps FC, 29 Apr. 2014, www.whitecapsfc.com/news/back-day-nasl-era. Accessed 18 Nov. 2021.

“Vancouver Whitecaps FC Logo.” Logos-World.net, 26 Apr. 2021, logos-world.net/vancouver-whitecaps-fc-logo/. Accessed 17 Nov. 2021.

“Vancouver Whitecaps FC Stats and History.” FB Reference, 2021, fbref.com/en/squads/ab41cb90/history/Vancouver-Whitecaps-FC-Stats-and-History. Accessed 18 Nov. 2021.

“Vancouver Whitecaps FC Team History.” Sports Team History, 2021, sportsteamhistory.com/vancouver-whitecaps-fc. Accessed 16 Nov. 2021.