Good Friday morning Caps fans. It must be the international break and the upcoming Nations League clashes because Whitecaps Twitter (TM) briefly took a break from arguing about Olivier Giroud to bashing Toronto.

Now I’ve been to Toronto. It’s a very nice city, with good food, fantastic arts and a phallic iconic building at its center. But I’ve also been to Vancouver which is, quite frankly, superior in every way. The natural beauty, the Chinese food, the UBC Anthropology Museum—ugh, its all making me want to book a ticket there right now.

This superiority also appears to extend to hosting Canadian Men’s National Team matches. Toronto is set to host one of the biggest CMNT games in recent memory, when the U.S. comes to town on Tuesday night. Plenty of fans from outside the Toronto Metropolitan area appeared to be taking the piss out of the fact that, despite having almost 6 million people to draw on, only 12,000 tickets had been sold for the game.

Alphonso Davies versus Christian Pulisic! Jonathan David versus Josh Sargent! Donneil Henry versus ... uh ... Matt Miazga (?). Seriously, only 12,000 tickets for a competition that frankly means a lot more to teams like Canada than it does for the U.S., who is likely to make the Hexagonal come hell or high water.

Well, a few people took exception to this line of thinking cough cough Duane Rollins and argued that it didn’t matter where the Canadians played, attendance was always mediocre.

If you think (insert city) would vastly outdraw Toronto for #CanMNT games you’re not really aware of all the challenges associated with selling tickets to national team games.



That’s not to say there shouldn’t be games elsewhere, but don’t expect massive crowds anywhere. — Duane Rollins (@24thminute) October 10, 2019

Now, I can’t be sure if this is a world class troll job or if its willful ignorance because the next day, this popped up on my feed...

For your records: Average attendance in last 4 competitive #CanMNT games in VAN/TOR



TOR: 11,955

VAN (w/ ): 28,211

VAN (no , 3 games only): 19,349



TOR got: (GC) (WCQ), (NLQ), (NL)

VAN got: (WCQ), (WCQ), (WCQ), (NLQ)



(17K) outdrew all the TOR games — Peter Galindo (@GalindoPW) October 10, 2019

It’s OK Duane, I get it, math is hard.

Now look, as a USMNT supporter I hope we thump y’all no matter what, if the game was in Vancouver or Toronto or Halifax or Nunavut. But big international matches at BC Place are a great advert for the supporters in the region, which in turn reflects well on the Whitecaps—something I have a bit more vested of an interest in.

And, quite frankly, there is a pretty good case to be made that making Vancouver the de facto home for big matches, much like the U.S. used to do with MAPFRE Stadium in Columbus, might not be a bad idea. The abysmal failure that was the US’ WCQ match against Costa Rica at Red Bull Arena is yet more proof that playing in the biggest possible market does not equal the best attendance.

I’m pretty excited for the Nations League match on Tuesday and I’m sure we will be thoroughly embarassed because that is the USMNT way as of late. I just hope the atmosphere matches what should be a really fun clash and the start of what hopefully is a big time rivalry for years to come. Both Canada and the U.S. have a fun rivalry in international hockey (you all probably don’t consider us a rival because of how dominate you are which, fair) and have some of the best young players in CONCACAF (whether they all choose to play for the U.S. or not remains to be seen). Hopefully we’re in for a treat on Tuesday.

Onto the links!

Shameless Self Promotion

This is the first CWTC in which I have neither a match preview or match recap to plug, RIP. The content party at 86Forever, however, don’t stop and we have all the latest gossip on the Giroud rumors (and others). Sam Rowan hears from MDS on the path the Whitecaps might chart forward. And our fearless leader AtlantisB does a “by the numbers” of the Caps’ season that you may have to read through your fingers, horror movie style.

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