Match Thread: June 20, 2023 - Vancouver FC v Forge

[narduch]

Game is at 7pm PT (10pm ET) on One Soccer and Fubo 

Edited July 1, 2023 by narduch

[nolando]

Heading out from Vancouver for this one. Will be interesting to see the crowd on a midweek, gray evening with a slight chance of showers.

Hopefully Vancouver can get something out of this. And with some young Canadians doing rhe heavy lifting.

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

I'd brace yourself for bad news on the actual crowd judging from the Showpass seating map. No sign of a sudden late rush due to a giveaway/special deal so far unlike what happend with the Friday night game.

[narduch]

[masster]

Hundal and Sandoval on the bench??

[SpursFlu]

Give it up for the kids

[jonovision]

Man, Forge are cursed. Dominated Valour last week and lost 2-0, now could easily have gone up 2-0 themselves, but two gaffes later and they're down 2-0.

Not complaining, of course. Now if that curse would rub off on Pacific for a bit.

[SpursFlu]

Every teenager on the field for Vancouver looked great. Nice football as well 

[Bison44]

15 minutes ago, jonovision said:

Man, Forge are cursed. Dominated Valour last week and lost 2-0, now could easily have gone up 2-0 themselves, but two gaffes later and they're down 2-0.

Not complaining, of course. Now if that curse would rub off on Pacific for a bit.

Hey if Forge wants to take Valours curse and make it there own, so be it.  

[SpursFlu]

I like this Henry guy. He has the je ne ces pa

[SpursFlu]

I like the tractor parked along the touchline. Nice nod to the Valley 

[nolando]

2 hours ago, SpursFlu said:

I like the tractor parked along the touchline. Nice nod to the Valley 

Is that maybe the thing that waters the pitch? I could swear I saw something like that on the pitch at the Ottawa match.

[nolando]

2 hours ago, SpursFlu said:

Every teenager on the field for Vancouver looked great. Nice football as well 

Agreed. James Cameron held his own really well. I'm a big fan of Crawford and Mael as well. And TJ...wow.

Tonight there was a lot of experience out there for Forge, some capped former MNT players on the pitch, some real experience, ex-MLS guys, and they mostly held their own. Didn't hesitate. 

Honestly I dont even think it's a Canadian bias to say that based on tonight,  you could easily ship out Bakare, the Korean-American Kwak, the big projected star in Mexican Sandoval, the "last piece" Robe and a couple of the other foreign guys and it wouldn't impact the bottom line result at all. In short, does the club really need them?

These Canadian kids are alright, afterall.

 

[nolando]

Really terrible attendance though. Almost totally worrisome. And, besides the supporters in the south end (where it easily was 80-90% empty), it was just so damn quiet. Like, it would have been easy to coach from the 11th row. In my Sunday Morning shout at the TV EPL voice.

Not a drop of rain. Dry seats. Cheap eats. Free parking. Pleasant as can be atmosphere. Stuff for the kids. School night but school's almost out. Mild. Zero competition from any other entertainment. NHL and NBA playoffs over.

[CDNFootballer]

58 minutes ago, nolando said:

Really terrible attendance though. Almost totally worrisome. And, besides the supporters in the south end (where it easily was 80-90% empty), it was just so damn quiet. Like, it would have been easy to coach from the 11th row. In my Sunday Morning shout at the TV EPL voice.

Not a drop of rain. Dry seats. Cheap eats. Free parking. Pleasant as can be atmosphere. Stuff for the kids. School night but school's almost out. Mild. Zero competition from any other entertainment. NHL and NBA playoffs over.

Think the attendance of 2149 was actually decent taking into consideration it was a Tuesday night (2nd worst weekday for a game), big grey clouds over the stadium late afternoon and possible rain in the forecast. I was expecting a bit lower. Thankfully no more weekday games for the team rest of the season.

[Cicero]

Had to laugh when I saw the start of the highlights showing a plane flying over downtown Vancouver...anyhow. Another brutal offensive showing from the front line of Forge. First goal you could call bad luck for Samuel, second was an error by Belewu followed by Henry and Jonsson not playing the ball aggressively, someone's got to close the guy down, but both completely sagged off. But of course, the offence did the D no favours. When your only offensive chances are coming from midfielders, and you've scored three goals in six games, time to look at your personnel.

[youllneverwalkalone]

The average age of VFC must have been U20. Literally men vs boys. Boys win.

[gator]

The problem for Forge is their men are old men relatively speaking and the game is passing them by, they were a bit unlucky in this one hitting the bar 3 times but the defensive errors were inexcusable, I think Forge have shown they are very poor offensively and it could be a very challenging season for this ageing team, bad for us Forge fans but good for the league!

[jonovision]

34 minutes ago, gator said:

The problem for Forge is their men are old men relatively speaking and the game is passing them by, they were a bit unlucky in this one hitting the bar 3 times but the defensive errors were inexcusable, I think Forge have shown they are very poor offensively and it could be a very challenging season for this ageing team, bad for us Forge fans but good for the league!

They have a few players old enough to be on the downside of their careers (Bekker, Samuel, James, Morgan but he's not a regular) but all of the attackers that are failing to score lately are mid-20s or younger. Borges, Campbell, Hamilton, even Pacius. All guys who have had success in this league or elsewhere but seem to have stalled. I thought Pacius, for one, might be a guy to move on to a better level.

Kwasi Poku is a young player for Forge that has really jumped off the screen for me in the few matches I've watched.

Vancouver deserve credit for their big win. You can't argue they weren't at least a bit fortunate not to be down early but once they scored they took control.

[Watchmen]

6 hours ago, CDNFootballer said:

Think the attendance of 2149 was actually decent taking into consideration it was a Tuesday night (2nd worst weekday for a game), big grey clouds over the stadium late afternoon and possible rain in the forecast. I was expecting a bit lower. Thankfully no more weekday games for the team rest of the season.

I'm not sure there were actually 2149 there. I know of a number of season ticket holders who didn't head to this one (though obviously that ticket is sold).

[gator]

46 minutes ago, Watchmen said:

I'm not sure there were actually 2149 there. I know of a number of season ticket holders who didn't head to this one (though obviously that ticket is sold).

Doesn't anyone here count the empty seats?😐

[Soccerpro2]

9 hours ago, nolando said:

Really terrible attendance though. Almost totally worrisome. And, besides the supporters in the south end (where it easily was 80-90% empty), it was just so damn quiet. Like, it would have been easy to coach from the 11th row. In my Sunday Morning shout at the TV EPL voice.

Not a drop of rain. Dry seats. Cheap eats. Free parking. Pleasant as can be atmosphere. Stuff for the kids. School night but school's almost out. Mild. Zero competition from any other entertainment. NHL and NBA playoffs over.

This is absolutely a huge problem. A brand new team drawing flies is not what anyone who is involved with the CPL wants to see.

I have concerns about the CPL putting teams in MLS markets. Having the team way out in Fraser Valley was supposed to lesson the potential overlap but this launch (attendance-wise) has been disastrous. 

[shermanator]

.

Edited June 21, 2023 by shermanator

[SpursFlu]

I thought the attendance was pretty good all things considered. I know I wasn't driving out to Langley for what I was expecting to be a complete beatdown