Coffee with the Caps, Friday October 20

10/21/2022 12:02 PM

Good Monday morning Caps fans. Hope you all are nearing the end of your workweek and have something to look forward to this weekend.

It was a busy week for the Whitecaps and if you blinked you might have missed something. The most notable development was, as expected, the roster decisions from the club, as we now know who is leaving the club, who is staying and who remains a big fat question mark.

Confirmed to be staying in Vancouver are Sebastian Berhalter, Isaac Boehmer, Julian Gressel and Ryan Raposo, all of whom had their 2023 options picked up. There are few surprises here; in fact it hews pretty close to the list I predicted/hoped for (Boehmer I was eh on but I had a pretty good feeling he’d stick around anyway).

You can add Luis Martins to this list too, as the club agreed a new contract with him. I thought Martins was decent this season but still hope a) he isn’t a starter next year (he was a touch too inconsistent and a bit too lax a defender) and b) he isn’t on a salary that keeps the club from bringing in another starter.

Meanwhile, the club is still talking with Lucas Cavallini, Derek Cornelius, Cody Cropper, Marcus Godinho, Jake Nerwinski, Leonard Owusu and Tosaint Ricketts on a new deal.

These guys presumably fall into a couple different camps. All signs point to Cava and Cornelius as being in the “please sign a new deal so we can actually get a transfer fee for you” category (why they didn’t just pick up the options as leverage is beyond me).

Nerwinski and Owusu are presumably in the “we’d love to keep you but want to pay you less” bucket.

I’m not really sure why they didn’t pick up the option on Godinho, who is cheap enough domestic cover and wasn’t making all that much money ($88k, per the salary lists). Cropper and Ricketts could be exploring other options as well and might be considering Vancouver as a fallback.

Michael Baldisimo (subject to the re-entry draft), Janio Bikel, David Egbo and Evan Newton all will depart the club and given that the latter three were on loan deals, this isn’t a shock.

In non-roster move news, Russell Teibert underwent ankle surgery this week and is expected to be back in time for the 2023 season. Wishing Rusty a speedy recovery.

Finally, if you’re reading this, you probably have some degree of knowledge about the most serious development of the week.

Apparent social media posts earlier this week alleged domestic abuse on the part of Javain Brown (I haven’t seen them personally). While speculation swirled, MLS was apparently investigating and they say the individual who made the post ultimately recanted their allegations and, presumably, no action is forthcoming from the club or league.

I obviously don’t have enough information to weigh in on this one way or another. I imagine fans will be watching closely to see if there are any further developments. All I’ll really add is that this is clearly a bad situation if the above facts are true, and it is a bad situation if it is not.

Shameless Self Promotion

While MLS is in the process of sorting out their end-of-season awards, we have our own for the Guess the Starting Lineup contest — check it out here

Best of the Rest

In horrible news, Masato Kubo has passed away after entering the ICU earlier this week. He was 32 years old and will be fondly remembered in Vancouver for his attitude as a player — our condolences to his family and friends.

A look at the decisions that remain for the Caps this offseason

The latest MLS salary numbers have plenty of interesting tidbits to unpack

A late goal liftedLAFC in another exciting playoff El Traffico Thursday. Meanwhile, Philadelphia Uniongot by FC Cincinnati in a heated affair

Canada will tack on a friendly against Bahrain in the run up to the World Cup, swinging by before dropping into Qatar