MLS is Back Tournament
Group B, Matchday 2
ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, Orlando FL.
Thursday, July 9 – 10:30 PM ET
Major League of Soccer, America’s top flight of soccer has been suspended from training and games like all other major sports in the country amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The MLS went into moratorium in mid-March, only two weeks into the 2020 Regular Season.
Now the league is coming back to life through the MLS is Back Tournament, a World-Cup like tournament format held in ESPN’s Wide World of Sports in Orlando, Florida. All 26 MLS teams will enter the Disney owned complex and begin the tournament on July 8, whilst no fans are allowed to attend the games, and players, coaches, staff and referees will all stay in hotels nearby for the entire duration of the tournament which ends with a final match of the tournament scheduled for Wednesday, August 12.
FC Dallas and Vancouver Whitecaps FC, two sides from Major League Soccer’s Western Conference will be opening the MLS is Back Tournament Group B games, and will play against each other in the last game of Matchday 2. The last time these two sides met was in Dallas in June 2019, in what ended with a 2-2 draw.
FC Dallas are considered a young team that is known to explode on the pitch with energy and drive. The team’s #PlayYourKids mentality lets many young and driven players come up to the field and play a part in the squad’s success.
Luchi Gonzalez (Right); Photo: Collodi Photography
Many other MLS sides find Dallas’s “fresh legs” hard to keep up with, especially in later stages of the game. The team started the season with a 2-0 win at home over the Philadelphia Union, followed by a 2-2 home draw to Montreal Impact.
New Dallas Head Coach Luchi Gonzalez is expected to keep playing and developing the club’s young talent including midfielder Paxton Pomykal who already scored a late goal in this season opener against Philadelphia Union, Colombian forward Jesus Ferreira, rookie Tanner Tessmann and three-season Dallas FC defender Reggie Cannon. All these young players will be joined by Franco Jara, the new Dallas FC forward that already has a proven track record from Liga MX.
Vancouver Whitecaps aren’t considered a strong side as Dallas. The Whitecaps finished the 2019 MLS Regular Season at the bottom of the very bottom of the MLS Western Conference table. The Canadian side has gone through a serious rebuild and spend a club-record amount on new talent. Namely Designated Player Lucas Cavallini. The Canadian international forward who played in Puebla from Liga MX where he registered 29 goals and 8 assists in 81 appearances with the club.
Vancouver Whitecaps Lucas Cavallini; Photo: Vancouver Whitecaps Online
Another newcomer to Vancouver is French midfielder David Milinkovic who played for the Whitecaps first two games this season before it came to a stop and showed a very promising performance. They will be joined by Leonard Owsumu who will play next to South Korean Inbeom Hwang who had a fantastic first season with the Whitecaps in 2019. And defender Jake Nerwinski also looks good from the little we had seen from him before the season came to a close.
After a painful season opener, where Vancouver conceded at home a 1-3 defeat to Sporting KC, the Whitecaps got a 1:0 upset victory on the road against LA Galaxy, with Tosaint Ricketts scoring for Vancuver in the second half (74’) and Galaxy’s Joe Corona being shown a red card and sent off a minute later, leaving the hosts with 10 men on the field and spoiling Galaxy’s MLS debut of international soccer star Javier Hernández.