If you are a fan of the Vancouver Whitecaps you have probably come across the name Marco Bustos at some point. Depending on your level of fanaticism your knowledge of him probably varies quite a bit. Perhaps you are only aware of him as the guy who turned in an awful 45 minutes against D.C. United last year. Perhaps you know him as a standout for WFC2. Or, maybe you were even aware of his exploits with the Whitecaps Residency. Bustos represents an interesting case study for both the successes and the failures of the Whitecaps Residency program.

The Timeline:

Bustos enjoyed a distinguished youth career in his home province of Manitoba. During this time he garnered some interest from Liverpool (yes, that Liverpool) but didn’t catch on after a trial. He joined the Whitecap’s Residency instead where, once again, he was a standout. This included a whopping 19 goals in 24 appearances in his last year with the Residency. This led to him earning a first team contract. Unfortunately there was no WFC2 then, so Bustos had very irregular football, making seven appearances in the PDL and one in the Voyageur's Cup.

Bustos missed the start of the inaugural WFC2 season due to injury but when he eventually did see the pitch he was a bright spot in an otherwise dismal team with seven goals and one assist. Most Importantly though he was clearly an above average player, in his first full year as a pro, who had been developed by the Residency Program. Bustos looked like a shoe-in to be a successful first team player. What could possibly go wrong?

Bustos built on the 2015 season total of seven goals and one assists with a 2016 total of...seven goals and two assists.

Despite being with a much better team, Bustos produced almost exactly the same amount. Bustos was quoted as saying “the season kind of plateaued... at stages.” He was still an above average USL player but he hadn’t really made significant strides from the previous season. In his first team appearances, Bustos didn’t exactly set the world on fire either, though he was often played out of position on the wing.

With seven games remaining in the 2017 USL season, Bustos has six goals and one assist. It looks as though once again Bustos will put up almost exactly the same numbers as in the 2015 season. Bustos was surprisingly not among the players loaned out after the ‘Caps were eliminated from the Voyageur's Cup, despite interest from clubs in Chile. With his contract expiring at the end of the year Bustos’ future remains uncertain. Nevertheless he is still one of the best WFC2 players. Over the last month especially, Bustos has looked motivated and downright dominant at the USL level. I’ve said in the past that if good performances for WFC2 aren’t rewarded then there is no point in having it, but at the same time it’s kind of difficult to advocate putting Bustos in as the starting #10. Yordy Reyna is playing well there and it’s usually a spot that teams put a big money acquisition in.

What This Says About the Whitecaps’ Investment in Youth

Bustos’ story is not an unfamiliar one to Whitecaps fans. Marco Carducci, Kianz Froese and Phillipe Davies have all stood out at every level up to but excluding the first team in MLS. For whatever reason the Whitecaps just can’t quite get a residency grad over the final hurdle to being a regular first team contributor. In some cases players have even gone on to play for European clubs and stood out, leaving us fans wondering why they can’t do it here. Sam Adekugbe impressed with Brighton and Hove Albion, Kianz Froese scored a number of goals for Fortuna Dusseldorf’s reserve side and Dario Zanatta has had a promising start for Heart of Midlothian. Additionally WFC2 have shown that they can be successful in USL (though that hasn’t been the case this season), yet there still hasn’t been a real MLS quality player produced. You could technically count Tim Parker but he only really played there for half a season. Additionally I think if he hadn’t gotten injured Brett Levis would be a first team contributor, and I think Spencer Richey could be if given the chance, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Basically the Residency Program is great at producing above average USL players, and has produced a few players who look as though they may succeed in Europe but can’t produce players who good enough to be MLS starters.

Why Can’t the Residency Produce MLS starters?:

I don’t know definitively but I do have some suggestions.

1. The system is built to make good USL players:

People tend to forget that the Whitecaps Residency was originally designed to produce players for the first team while the club was still in USL (indeed people tend to forget the Whitecaps existed before 2011). While the program has expanded since then, it’s possible that the youth infrastructure is still transitioning to being good enough to produce MLS level players.

2. The players don’t value playing for the Whitecaps:

In a 2010 article for the New York Times Michael Sokolove notes that almost all of the youth players for Ajax, in addition to being talented young footballers, grew up as massive fans of the club. This only adds to the drive of young players to one day make it to the first team. The Whitecaps, for the most part, don’t have this luxury. Until the club made the jump to MLS a lot of people couldn’t be bothered to support the club and even with the jump, a lot of young people still choose to support a European club. It’s possible that this breeds a sense among the residency products that this is only a stepping stone to bigger and better things, rather than a goal in and of itself. This doesn’t mean that Residency players shouldn’t be ambitious but the perception of Europe as the holy grail of a soccer career certainly contributed to the departures of Froese, Adekugbe, and Zanatta.

3. First team coaches are ill-equipped to implement youth players into the first team:

This criticism is pretty common in our comments section and around the Whitecaps twitter sphere. It is argued that under Carl Robinson players, especially attacking players, either don’t progress or, worse still, regress. These arguments aren’t entirely unfounded. Most of the players who have flourished under Robbo have been defensive players like Tim Parker, Kendall Waston, and David Ousted (though that may be more down to Marius Rovde). On the attacking side of things it’s been pretty dire. Caleb Clarke never got so much as a sniff at the first team, Omar Salgado’s career fizzled out, and Kekuta Manneh never lived up to the hype he created for himself after his hat trick at 18. To be fair to Robinson, it’s not like those players then went on to set the world alight but it could equally be argued that this was down to him stunting their development.

I can’t really say for sure if the Whitecaps are doing something radically wrong when it comes to developing attacking talents because I don’t know what doing it properly entails. There’s certainly a bit of a trend of attacking players not working out of the Whitecaps but weather that’s down to the coaching staff, recruitment, or the players themselves I can’t say for sure.

4. The Whitecaps are reticent to take risks:

MLS is a league with a lot of parity (an original take, I know). This means that if you take a risk, handing the starting right back spot to a guy who’s never played there before for example, and it doesn’t pay off then you could potentially be in a lot of trouble. This year perennial MLS giants LA Galaxy have chosen to try to grow their own talent, as opposed to signing big names as they have in the past. Oops...

If you take a big chance on a young player and it doesn’t come off then that could be the difference between making the playoffs and, well, not. This means that it can be tempting to just sign a solid MLS veteran as opposed to throwing in a young home grown player. Ben McKendry might have a higher ceiling then Andrew Jacobson but we know that Jacobson won’t let us down.

Back to Bustos:

So we’ve looked at some reasons that residency players struggle to make it to the first team but what are we going to do with Bustos? There are essentially three options

Sell him: Just make it someone else’s problem. Get some money, get a percentage of future transfers and call it a day. Re-Sign him and loan him out: Give Bustos a year in a league that challenges him a little more and see where he is after that. Re-Sign him and make him the understudy to Reyna: It’s possible that this could work. Bustos plays a similar role to Reyna, in that he plays in the 10 role but is more of a shadow streaker then a playmaker, so you could give Bustos the games that you want to rest Reyna for (or use him there if Reyna goes down with another long term injury). Ideally you’d like to see Bustos as a starter at this point in his career but at 21 he’s actually younger then some of the other prospects in the Whitecaps’ system so he still has time to grow.

As always be sure to let us know what you think in the comments.