BIRARDA REVIEWS WOMEN'S SEASON

July 26, 2007 - As the 2007 W-League playoffs begin this week, Vancouver Whitecaps FC women were left to reflect on a season that ended sooner than expected.

The triumph of claiming of a second W-League championship in 2006 are now fond memories for head coach Bob Birarda, as his side missed the post-season for the first time in team history following a disappointing campaign. A final regular-season record of six wins, three defeats and three draws left the Whitecaps a point short of a playoff berth in the Western Conference, with the expansion San Diego Sunwaves and arch-rivals Seattle Crossfire Sounders moving on to Friday’s conference championship game in southern California.

With several members of the 2006 team committing to Canada’s World Cup squad, the challenge of defending the W-League title proved a step too far for Birarda’s young team. “We just have to accept the fact that the conditions weren’t perfect for us this year,” Birarda told whitecapsfc.com. “I think it took us too long to identify the strengths and weaknesses in the players that were new to us, so by the time we figured them out, we were in a difficult and stressful time and it was too hard to pull it back together. We needed to go with our gut instinct on some players and hope that we were right, but it took us a long time to figure it all out. We didn’t have enough training time to adapt the players to what we wanted them to do, we instead had to adapt to what they were able to do, and I think that really hurt us.”

Results usually shape a team’s campaign, and although defeats late in the season to San Diego and Seattle were pivotal, Birarda felt the team’s three draws were the ultimate factor in missing the playoffs. “Dropping points to some of the teams we shouldn’t have dropped points to because we didn’t put the teams away were what cost us in a big way in the end,” he said. “If we don’t drop those points, then we’re hosting a playoff game. When you look at the three draws, two of them were us scoring in the last 10 seconds of the game to create a draw. For me, the most devastating draw was the one at the end of the Colorado road trip to Real Colorado. When we tied that one, I thought that was a bad couple of points to drop.”

With the focus now turning to the 2008 season, Birarda is unsure which players will be returning to the team at this stage. “We don’t know the answer to those questions,” he said. “We have to evaluate who we want to have back and make sure that they want to come back. It’s a great place to play, so in terms of what the players want, I’d be surprised to see not too many of them wanting to be back. The club treats people really well and it’s a great environment for women’s soccer. What I think we need to do is add to the pieces we had this year. We don’t know yet whether the Canadian World Cup players will be available to us, so that could change the dynamic pretty significantly.”

Though the season is at an end, Birarda will remain busy throughout the off-season with his duties at the club, as well as being part of Canada’s campaign at the FIFA Women’s World Cup in September. “On Thursday, I’ll be going to San Diego with several of the Whitecaps youth teams to spend some time evaluating what’s going on there and getting to know those players a little bit,” he revealed. “Then I’ll be focusing on preparing our structure for the winter program, as we are putting together a full-time program that is similar to the men’s residency program. A lot of the local Whitecaps senior players will train year-round, and will add some of the top youth players into that structure as well. We’ll do that five or six times-a-week over the winter months, and throughout that process, we will be building a new team as well. I’m also going to be with the Canadian senior national team, as I will go to China with them in late August for World Cup preparations.”

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