Vancouver Whitecaps FC is a well-known Canadian soccer team that is a member of Major League Soccer, and is their seventeenth team. The Vancouver based team is the third franchise to uphold the Whitecaps legacy, which is popularly nicknamed Caps, Blue and White. The team was granted the MLS franchise in 2009, when in fact it originally goes back to 1974, which is when it was initially formed. The team made it to the World Football Challenge of 2011 in which, it competed against Manchester City, landed a score of 1:2. The Whitecaps are currently owned by Greg Kerfoot, Steve Luczo, Jeff Mallett and Steve Nash, under head coach Martin Rennie.
In 2009, a candidate ownership group of Vancouver was awarded the seventeenth MLS franchise by Don Garber, the league’s commissioner. No name was suggested at the time of the announcement so that after a year the club agreed to take the original Whitecaps name. While preparing for their first season in the league, Vancouver Whitecaps FC gathered fresh talent from all over the world, which included Paul Barber, the former executive of Tottenham Hotspur F.C., as the club’s new CEO. Also joining the executives were former head coach of D.C. United, Tom Soehn, appointed as the Operation Director, and Richard Grootscholten as the head coach and as Technical Director.
Vancouver Whitecaps FC began playing in the MLS season of 2011, starting with their first game against Toronto FC, whom they defeated with a score of 4-2. Following a promising winning start, the team was confronted with much challenges in winning another match throughout their remaining eleven games in which they lost five while had six draws. After their 1-1 game score with the famous New York Red Bulls, Teiter Thordardon, their then head coach was replaced by Martin Rennie.
Vancouver Whitecaps FC competed in most of their early matches at Empire Field, which was supposed to be a temporary arena constructed for on the previous site of Empire Stadium, to be a home ground of BC Lions during the renovation of their original home station. Empire Field is known to provide great mountain views that provide a ring around Vancouver city, becoming a prominent feature of the Whitecap home games. The Caps played their first BC Place match in the October of 2011, against Portland Timbers. BC Place stadium is the team’s current home ground with a seating capacity of twenty-one thousand, five hundred that can be stretched to fit more than fifty-four thousand people. Vancouver Whitecaps FC tickets have thus become a real treat for soccer freaks who love watching a big game with a packed crowd.
Vancouver Whitecaps FC has had much rivalry with Portland Timbers and Seattle Sounders. The rivalries have become a significant part of the Pacific Northwest soccer culture, where fans are more concerned with the rival games’ outcomes than perhaps the MLS seasons. Get Vancouver Whitecaps FC tickets and come enjoy a promising, high energy game against a backdrop of Vancouver Mountains.
