Vancouver Whitecaps play for country, city and league in Concacaf Champions Cup final
In his post-election victory speech late on the night of 28 April, Canada's prime minister Mark Carney celebrated a momentous political comeback by reinforcing what he felt were the country's three core values: humility, ambition and unity.
But in the face of constant threats, gleeful taunts and mounting tension, there was also a warning to the United States.
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'President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never ever happen.'
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Two nights later at Chase Stadium, about 40 minutes south of Trump's Xanadu at Mar-a-Lago, an unfancied but spirited and confident Vancouver Whitecaps outfit embarrassed the garish glitz of Inter Miami – rather deliciously, with the help of a couple of Americans – and easily booked their place in the final of the Concacaf Champions Cup for the very first time, becoming only the third Canadian side ever to qualify for the decider. They play Cruz Azul on Sunday night, and could end the night as the first Canadian side to win the competition – any version of it, dating back to 1962.
The team's domestic form sees them currently leading Major League Soccer's Western Conference, while they're one point from the summit of the overall standings. They've been on an unbeaten run of fifteen games and have just two defeats in 24 across all competitions this season, but it somehow gets better. They've accomplished this with a novice MLS boss, Jesper Sørensen, only in the job since the start of the year and having replaced the beloved Vanni Sartini who'd led the club to back-to-back MLS playoff appearances and three successive Canadian Championship titles.
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Oh, and one more thing. Last December, the Whitecaps ownership group of Greg Kerfoot, Steve Luczo, Jeff Mallett and Steve Nash dropped a bombshell and announced they were selling. Should new investors be found there's a distinct chance the club will be relocated to an American city.
Maybe it's the Canadian way: to do good things but not speak about them very much
- Axel Schuster
And yet, the timing of such a doomsday scenario could hardly be any better. With a remarkable surge in nationalistic sentiment since Trump's ramblings about annexing Canada, the country has never been more solidified and compelled to protect what's theirs. The Whitecaps, a club that proudly boasts over half a century of impactful soccer history and local cultural resonance, have felt the benefit of the swell and a rescue mission is already well under way.
'You wouldn't be able to do my job if you weren't optimistic because you always have to believe that a positive development is ahead of you,' says Axel Schuster, CEO and sporting director of the Vancouver Whitecaps. 'Sometimes, if there's a risk that you'll lose something it's only then you realise how important it is to you.'
Leaning into the patriotism and community seen in recent months, Schuster is pushing hard for a new, privately funded downtown venue for the Whitecaps at the city's landmark PNE fairgrounds site, a stone's throw from Empire Stadium, the original home of the Whitecaps. The team's current base at BC Place is owned by the province and greatly restricts the club's revenue streams and commercial opportunities. A shiny asset is one distinct way of enticing new ownership to keep the team where it is and the City of Vancouver has confirmed that 'high level discussions' have already happened.
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'Maybe it's the Canadian way: to do good things but not speak about them very much and we haven't always told our stories,' Schuster says. 'There are enough people who believe in this club being a major asset to our community and to the soccer landscape in Canada and believe that it's worthwhile to fight for it, to keep it alive and keep it in Vancouver.'
After a long stint in the Bundesliga and influential roles at Mainz and Schalke, Schuster took the Vancouver job just as a global pandemic brought everything to a halt. Since then, he's overseen an impressive rise. Three visits to the playoffs, a mammoth increase in attendance, a litany of domestic cup success and all achieved on an always-conservative budget. In 2024, the club paid $17.4m in salaries to leave them comfortably mid-range in MLS. In contrast, Inter Miami splashed out $41.7m, while cross-country rivals Toronto FC racked up an outlay of $31.8m. Look closely, though, and Vancouver boasts a perfectly proportioned roster between small, medium and big earners.
But perhaps Schuster's most impressive achievement has been ensuring off-field distractions and all of the worry, concerns and anxiety that come with an uncertain future, have not seeped on to the field or into the front office.
'It hasn't always been easy to be a Whitecaps employee and wear our badge,' he admits. 'When the news broke that the club was for sale, it was easy to say 'Look, nothing will change. We'll have the best ever season, we'll be the most attractive club in MLS that everyone wants to own.' But it's something else to fill those words with real life.'
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Winning has, at least for now, seemed to ease that instability.
Related: Pochettino turns to an unlikely savior for USMNT's struggles: MLS
'There were a lot of questions,' Schuster said. ''Will this club still be here?' 'Why should we sign this sponsorship deal with you?' And we told those people: 'Come with us because everything will be great'. After the second leg in Miami, I was so happy because I could feel how much it meant to everyone. To give them these special moments made me super happy. It was like we all got rewarded for everything.'
Schuster felt the 2024 season had been a 'missed opportunity' of sorts and that a fresh approach could unlock something new in the group. In Sørensen, he found a coach that has managed to get career-best performances out of players up and down the roster – a big reason why the team has excelled as much in continental competition as it has in MLS, where most teams involved in both tend to struggle in one or the other.
We'll make it very clear that we are not just one of 30 MLS teams. We are one team from British Columbia in Canada.
- Axel Schuster
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'There were two main criteria that our new coach needed to have: firstly, that he was a developer with a track record of improving players and not just young players,' Schuster says. 'Secondly, we didn't want a coach who would say, 'Some of these players won't fit my plans and I'll need one or two transfer windows to build a team'. We wanted someone who looked at the existing group and knew what to do with them to make it successful from the first day.'
Under Sørensen's watch, certain players have stepped up and the group has adapted impressively to the loss of talisman Ryan Gauld, sidelined since early March with a knee injury. While the likes of Brian White and Sebastian Berhalter have garnered much of the focus given their call-ups to the US national team, Schuster pinpoints the developments of Ali Ahmed and Tristan Blackmon as examples of Sorensen's coaching nous.
'Ali doesn't have that many years of being in a professional environment and Jesper has simplified his game, focusing on key areas rather than on his overall profile,' Schuster says. 'Tristan Blackmon has made big progress. In all of our stats, he's the best defender in MLS. You always felt he had the skills to be a top defender but maybe wasn't using them in the right way. But his consistency this year has been unbelievable.'
Despite the positivity this season, Schuster admits that he hardly ever enjoys watching games.
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'Even the second leg win over Inter Miami took a long time before I really believed it was done,' he says with a laugh. 'During the game there is nothing to enjoy. I can't watch with a lot of people around me, at least people I don't know, because I get pretty active about what we could do better and should do better.'
Schuster will certainly take some enjoyment from Sunday's Concacaf Champions Cup final against Mexican heavyweights Cruz Azul. Because on this particular international stage at this particular time, the Vancouver Whitecaps will not represent Major League Soccer. They'll represent the humility, ambition and unity of an entire nation.
'For us, we are proud to be Canadians,' Schuster says. 'Our players can appreciate living in this country and this province. I have a player who told me that at some point he might be ready to play in a more challenging league. But then he said, 'My family feels so good and so safe here and that's even more important than where I play'. So we also represent that. This is what we think is right. This is how a country, a city, a province should be. It's what we stand for. We will go there as proud Canadians and we will have the Maple Leaf everywhere. And we'll make it very clear that we are not just one of 30 MLS teams. We are one team from British Columbia in Canada.'
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