Saturday night at BC Place, the Vancouver Whitecaps began their MLS season with a rather nervy 1-0 win over a depleted Real Salt Lake side. While Jesper Sørensen’s team have not come sprinting out of the blocks to start 2026, they have kept back-to-back clean sheets and were quite clearly the better side in both matches they have played. They have also done this while handling some hectic midweek travel to Central America.

Salt Lake, for the lack of talent and experience in the XI, gave the Whitecaps some problems in this one, limiting most Vancouver attacks to the perimeter and putting the hosts under pressure on a couple of occasions with direct and vertical attacking play. Nonetheless, the Whitecaps held RSL to just two shots on target, only one of which was a decent scoring chance. So while the visitors deserve some credit, it says something about the Whitecaps that, for Salt Lake, merely keeping this one close is seen as a big success.

Alright, without further delay, on to the player grades.

Yohei Takaoka – 7.0

As mentioned, he was not very busy. He had a couple of entertaining moments with the ball at his feet, and...