VANCOUVER, BC – There's more than one way to skin a cat and there's more than one to build a championship-winning side.
Some teams will claim end season honors on the back of clinical, and plentiful, finishing in front of the net. Others will secure their success through building upon a solid defensive footing.
The perfect scenario sees a team encompass both, but with goals still proving hard to come by, if the Vancouver Whitecaps are to lift their first ever MLS Cup come December, it looks like they're going to have to achieve it on the back of their league-leading defensive play.
"The old saying goes 'defense wins championships' and it does, it really does," Whitecaps coach Carl Robinson told reporters at training on ahead of Sunday's decisive Western Conference semifinal clash with the Portland Timbers (10 pm ET; FS1, TSN, RDS1). "We know we need to score more goals, collectively and individually. That's something we'll address again in the offseason.
"If you're strong at the back, the old Arsenal teams of old, you've got a chance. Us being solid defensively at the back gives us a chance to have an opportunity in every game."
Vancouver's defense was stingy during the regular season, tied with Seattle with a league-low 36 goals against. David Ousted recorded 13 clean sheets over the course of the season for the second straight year. He added to that number last Sunday, as the 'Caps drew their first leg of their Western Conference semifinal 0-0 in Portland.
The Whitecaps' strong defensive core is their biggest asset heading into the playoffs and it's one which Robinson aims to capitalize on fully. His game plan was to get out of Providence Park with a shutout and it was executed to perfection.
"We've worked a lot on our defensive play throughout the year," Robinson added.
"It's very important. I identified at the start of this year, the end of last year, that we needed more goals in the team. But what I didn't want to do and take away from it was our defensive posture, our defensive play and how important it was to keep clean sheets."
It's easy to point at the shutout record of Ousted as the key to the Whitecaps defensive success. And there is some truth to that. The Dane has once again been outstanding between the posts for Vancouver this year, saving three penalties and a multitude of points as the 'Caps claimed a club high finish of second in the West and third overall in MLS.
His numbers have seen him nominated for MLS Goalkeeper of the Year, a fact he's "honored" to have achieved but he is quick to spread the plaudits around.
Center back Kendall Waston has been nominated for MLS Defender of the Year and has been a rock in front of Ousted, with Matias Laba a further rock in front of him, in the defensive midfielder role. Those three players have been the crucial defensive spine of the Whitecaps but Ousted says it starts all the way at the top of the pitch with the strikers.
And it's that team mentality that Ousted feels gives the Whitecaps an advantage over some of their rivals and the boost that the team needs if they want to go deep in the playoffs.
"It's a great asset to the team that the defense is doing well," Ousted said. "The guys up front know that they don't have to score three or four to win the game. We could maybe nick it by scoring one goal.
"But also saying that, it's down to all eleven on that field to do the defensive work. It's not just the back four or five with me. It starts up front with Octavio pressing. We know defensively we're a good team and when I say team, I mean all of us."
With how well the defense is playing, however, is there not a sense of frustration that the attackers aren't getting the job done at the other end of the park?
Despite the extra pressure on the backline to continue to perform heroics, Ousted feels it serves little purpose to vent anger at things not going well at the other end of the pitch.
"It's easy to sit down and get frustrated and give up but that's not a solution to me," Ousted said. "It's a solution to go in there and pressure them to do better and work harder, and they do.
"You see here every single day that they're working on it and that's all that you can ask from these guys. I feel that we have the quality in the team to get the goals but it'll take some luck as well. Hopefully that luck is there Sunday."
Vancouver are in a strong position as they head into the second leg at BC Place on Sunday. Robinson knows the math is simple and so is the message he's told his players: "We've got to keep a clean sheet and we've got to score a goal."
The Whitecaps defense certainly seems up to their task, but if you want to take a real flight of fancy, it is possible that the Whitecaps could reach the MLS Cup on the back of a string of scoreless draws, in the event a penalty shootout is needed to decide the semifinal and Conference Championship series. It's not what Robinson or anyone would ideally want, but stranger things have happened.
"Someone said to me the other day about Greece," Robinson laughed. "I think they won the Euro champs [in 2004] on set pieces or something like that. I suppose it happens. Listen, I don't care how we get there as long as we can try and get there. Everybody wants to play pretty football, me included, and we have done at certain times this year.
"If you look at the home games we've lost – D.C., Seattle, Toronto – we played great. We really did play great. We had a lot of possession, we had a lot of chances and we lost. No-one really cares about that. It's about the end result."
