5 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
The offer went to New York City this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $1.7M — a club that wants Seymour Reid enough to be asked twice.
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 13 combined actions and a mark of 6.84, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Vancouver Whitecaps this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Vancouver Whitecaps, and 2 appearances in 6 say he has earned the hearing.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Vancouver Whitecaps, and it is not being withdrawn.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 21 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Vancouver Whitecaps have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Mohammed Sofo was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Julian Hall was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Vancouver Whitecaps know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Vancouver Whitecaps would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Vancouver Whitecaps, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Andrés Cubas wants continental football; whether Vancouver Whitecaps can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
At 19 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Thomas Müller and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Emmanuel Sabbi is on it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Emmanuel Sabbi trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Andrés Cubas signs something — a contract at Vancouver Whitecaps or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Vancouver Whitecaps. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
“I did not come here to warm up in front of people.” He is out of contract eventually, he is old enough to count the weeks, and Vancouver Whitecaps will have to give him a reason to stay or an exit.