Yachts and ferries dock daily just a few hundred meters from BC Place, where they play home matches on False Creek in the heart of downtown. Yet even for a profoundly oceangoing city like theirs, Vancouver Whitecaps FC currently find themselves in uncharted waters.
The ‘Caps are the toast of MLS, topping both the Supporters’ Shield and Western Conference standings with a 6W-1L-2D record (20 points) in league play, and are 180 minutes away from the 2025 Concacaf Champions Cup final as they prepare to host Inter Miami CF in Thursday night’s semifinal first leg (10:30 pm ET | FS1, OneSoccer; TUDN, ViX).
Flashing a composed, methodical possession style and remarkable collective resilience, VWFC are far and away North American soccer’s most surprising storyline of the year to date, all the more so with their captain and top talent Ryan Gauld sidelined by a knee injury.
Cinderella story
How did all this happen? Jesper Sørensen sounds almost as amazed about it as everyone else.
“Yeah, that's a very good question,” Vancouver’s unassuming first-year head coach told MLSsoccer.com with a fleeting smile on Thursday. “And you know, it's actually not that easy to answer, to be honest.”
The Dane has been on the job for barely three months, having been hired very late in the offseason, just a few weeks before their season opener, a ConcaChampions visit to Costa Rica’s Deportivo Saprissa. He arrived with zero professional experience on this side of the Atlantic and only a modest – albeit quite helpful, in his view – firsthand exposure to the region, via a 2018-19 stint in Toronto while his wife, Pernille, an oncologist, conducted research there.
“When you start out like I’ve done in a completely new place, with a squad and a roster of players that you don't really know that well beforehand, and you don't know the competition, and you don't know the opponents, then you can only hope for stuff like that,” Sørensen continued.
“You cannot plan for it. What you can do is try to do whatever you can to get the players to buy into what your ideas are, and then the way you would like to play, and then, of course, try to prepare yourself as best possible to what will come.”
Sørensen knows knocking off two of LIGA MX’s biggest heavyweights, CF Monterrey and Pumas UNAM, in consecutive rounds of CCC is exceedingly rare, even “having the football gods on our side sometimes,” particularly with both second legs taking place on Mexican soil, at altitude, following 1-1 first-leg draws in Vancouver.
The latter of those upsets was truly remarkable, the ‘Caps absorbing a gut punch in the form of Pumas striker Ignacio Pussetto’s 88th-minute goal, seemingly the series winner, before digging deep to conjure up heroics of their own via Tristan Blackmon’s sensational injury-time strike in Mexico City.
Even more extraordinarily, they flew home and dismantled Austin FC 5-1 at BC Place three days later.
“I'm amazed about the players’ performances, because I think it is not normal and I think everybody who's been to Mexico City and played there, and had to run, knows what it's about. It's difficult,” said Sørensen. “It was a great physical, mental effort to be able to come up with a comeback. The game itself, I was not that happy with, but that's just me being a coach, I think. But that's just how it is. But the mentality and then the physical effort, I couldn't ask for more.”
Defying expectations
He’s been briefed, too, on the Whitecaps’ mostly middling results in their 14-plus years in the league. That their roster spend tends to rank among MLS’s lowest, and the generally bearish outlook on their 2025 prospects among pundits, many of whom looked askance at both the early departure of Designated Player Stuart Armstrong and the decision to part company with his predecessor Vanni Sartini, the club’s most successful manager in their MLS era, over the winter.
None of that seems to have fazed him or his players, who have almost universally reached or exceeded career-best performance levels under his guidance, led by breakout stars Sebastian Berhalter, Édier Ocampo and Jayden Nelson.
“The remarkable thing is that now it feels like the performance is consistent, first of all over several competitions, games, including travel back and forth and all of this. But it’s also consistent regardless of the players that are on the pitch,” said sporting director Axel Schuster.
“We played so many different lineups. We played young players. We play our young draft pick [Tate Johnson], 19 years old, that we just recently drafted in the SuperDraft. Everyone would expect, OK, that needs time. It feels now that there is such a strong structure that every player can perform on a similar level in the structure.”
At this point, it’s worth wondering if Sørensen’s limited context has actually been a benefit rather than a shortcoming.
“We knew going in the season that we were kind of against the clock in the sense that we were starting really early with the Concacaf games,” noted striker Brian White, who himself had to report late to VWFC’s first preseason camp in Marbella, Spain due to his participation in the US men’s national team’s January camp.
“Everyone was, I think, really on top of getting down the tactics, getting down the principles that we went over a lot, during even the shorter time that I managed to get out there to Spain for the preseason. So we did a lot of the work in the film room, and I think that translated really well into the training pitch. And then everyone was really disciplined and determined to make it work on the field … We bought into a system, and I think it complements a lot of our players really, really well.”
Deep CCC runs have often inflicted debilitating effects on MLS sides over the decades, with so much travel, so many intensely demanding games so early in the calendar. Hardly any other coaches frame such situations as a benefit rather than a burden, as Sørensen does.
“It is too many games, and some of them at a too high level, at a very unpleasant time of the season, to be honest. But we've been fortunate enough to manage the games, and also getting the team to grow within the games,” he said. “We could have been beaten by one of the Mexican teams in the earlier rounds, but it also pushed us to get up to a high level, and it also pushed us to really play at high speed, play at a high pace in the games.
“That's been beneficial for us so far. I know we can also still have hangovers from this tournament. But right now, it's something that excites players and also people around the club.”
From Sartini to Sørensen
Both Sørensen and Schuster are quick to point to what he inherited upon arrival: A mature, tightly-knit group who took major strides under the charismatic Sartini and were eager to make another step forward.
“It's a group that's been together, at least for a number of us, for a number of years. So we've been able to grow together. We've learned from experiences together and have been able to develop together,” said White, who’s embraced a supersub role on several prominent occasions despite his status as the club’s all-time leading MLS scorer. “There's that camaraderie there.”
For Schuster, recognition and respect for Sartini’s contributions coexist seamlessly with the judgment that a change was needed.
“I don't want to say that we got complacent, but I would say we couldn't push ourselves to the highest energy that is always needed if you're a Vancouver, and you always come a little bit from a more team[-centered], outsider approach, and you don't rely on one or two players who will be always your game changers,” the German explained to MLSsoccer.com.
“The coaching change was one of the things we really wanted that he shakes everyone, that he gives everyone a new life, those who haven't played that much a new life, because they were hoping, and went into the season with the ambition and hope to prove to the new coach that they should be starters. And some of them who were always starting, to hold them accountable to do their best and to show up in the best way to start, and also, of course, to come in with a few new, fresh ideas.”
In a subtle shift from his freewheeling predecessor, Sørensen’s system revolves around control, ideally with a mastery of possession patterns and the ensuing ability to manage a match’s tempo and rhythm.
“What is important is that you make very tight structure, and the frame within which the players have to work in, and then you allow some freedom within that frame,” he explained. “For me, football is not played by 11 players – it’s played within, in between 11 players, and that's very, very important. So you have to make players see the same thing at the same time, and that's very difficult. That's the most difficult part of being a coach and make a team work.
“What we've worked on every day is to see if we can get people to recognize the situations alike. So if something happens in the game, they react in the same way towards that, and that's very, very difficult. And I think we are trying to get there still, but we have gone further ahead than I actually thought that we could in this time span.”
Preparing for Messi & Miami
That collective understanding and discipline – the frugal ‘Caps have long been a collectivist project by nature – figures to be of the utmost importance against Leo Messi, whose creativity and vision have made him such a devastating ‘scheme breaker’ across his legendary career. That fuels his influence on a Miami side who ruthlessly exploit even fleeting passages of open, chaotic play.
“We know that over the course of time, if you look at successful teams, that will be teams that will have been able to dictate the game with the ball, mostly, and that's the philosophy I have,” said Sørensen. “We know we're going to give up goals. It's going to happen. But we know that we get better if we follow the same things continuously. And that's actually why I'm a strong believer in that. I don't believe players can always solve things individually, because if you don't have all the best players every time, then you end up playing against Messi, and he'll be better than you, and then we cannot just always fix it.
"So we have to be able to help each other by having some common rules and common principles.”
All-in on Vancouver
As if all this wasn’t impressive enough, VWFC’s exploits on the pitch have unfolded alongside the club being put up for sale. While club and league officials have steadfastly emphasized there are neither plans nor desire to even contemplate relocation from the region that has embraced the ‘Caps since their birth in the old NASL back in 1974, there’s been pessimism in some quarters, perhaps driven by memories of the NBA’s Grizzlies leaving town for Memphis in 2001.
That was a factor in the club announcing their talks with the city of Vancouver over a new, soccer-specific stadium project at the Pacific National Exhibition Fairgrounds in Hastings Park, the former site of Empire Field, the temporary venue where the ‘Caps began life in MLS in 2011.
“In general, people always expect the worst. It's easier to think that,” said Schuster. “So for me, it was and is so important to explain to everyone that that's not the truth, that we really work only on one plan: We want to keep the club in Vancouver. Our ownership hasn't given up on this. They are not rushing out. And it is really of handing over the club to the next generation of owners. It's a process that also will take time … For that reason we also went public with our stadium project that we're working on, to share a little bit more of details, to create the positivity that I think is not only needed, but that the club also deserves right now.”
So there’s plenty for Whitecaps faithful to dream about these days – not just the looming prospect of their fearless team crossing swords with the GOAT at a sold-out BC Place with a spot in a continental final on the line, or a legitimate push for MLS hardware, but also a long-term home of their own.
