Vancouver Whitecaps show confidence in Cascadia Cup; Inter Miami leans on squad depth: Takeaways

Two weeks ago, Vancouver Whitecaps head coach Vanni Sartini entered his post-match press conference with a point to emphasize. His team had played Toronto FC off the pitch at BC Place, a 4-0 humbling for former Canada coach John Herdman and his side.

“We showed we are the best Canadian team and we have been for the past two to three years,” Sartini said after the match. “I don’t know why we have to remind everyone.”

On Saturday, Vancouver shifted focus to its other hotly contested triumvirate, the Cascadia Cup, with a 2-0 win over the Seattle Sounders.

The Whitecaps and Portland Timbers joined the Seattle Sounders in MLS in 2011, making way for a regional rivalry between the trio of teams. The Whitecaps, however, have largely been spoken about as the “third” team in the Pacific Northwest — until now.

Great teams tend to have an established core of players, often in key roles across the pitch. For Seattle, the Obafemi Martins-Clint Dempsey partnership and the defensive work led by Chad Marshall and Osvaldo Alonso dovetailed into the team’s dynastic late 2010s with Nicolas Lodeiro, Raul Ruidiaz, Stefan Frei and Jordan Morris at its heart. For Portland, stories of their successes are impossible to tell without mentioning Diego Valeri, Diego Chara and Sebastian