Mathías Laborda of Vancouver Whitecaps FC celebrates after scoring the side's fifth and winning penalty in the penalty shootout in the conference semi-final against Los Angeles Football Club at BC Place this past Saturday.Jeff Vinnick/Getty Images
In pure footballing terms, Thomas Müller has been there, done it, and bought more than his fair share of T-shirts along the way to nearly 1,000 games for club and country.
So when the World Cup winner describes last Saturday’s penalty shootout victory over Los Angeles Football Club as a “nice piece of history,” it’s worth letting that sink in for a moment.
Certainly few of the 53,957 who crammed into BC Place will ever forget an instant Major League Soccer classic, a drama-filled affair that has Vancouver awash with Whitecaps fever and the team just one win away from the MLS Cup final.
However, as befits the mentality of the most decorated German player ever – with 13 Bundesliga titles and a pair of Champions League winners’ medals to his name – the job is far from finished.
“I mean, nobody remembers quarter-finals normally,” he said. “The goal is always to get to the final, and that’s our next step, and that’s what I’m focusing [on] now.”
Priso ready for the spotlight as Vancouver Whitecaps continue MLS playoff run
While Müller can contribute to his new club in many ways owing to his almost unparalleled levels of experience, the 36-year-old was as helpless as anyone else at BC Place for the latter part of Saturday’s match. With Vancouver looking to close out the victory, the German legend had been subbed off four minutes before Son Heung-Min’s free kick that sent the contest to extra time and ultimately to penalties.
With the Whitecaps already a man down after Tristan Blackmon’s red card that led to Son’s goal, things got worse in the second half of extra time when they also lost Belal Halbouni to injury, having already made all five of their substitutions. So they had to play out the final 12 minutes down two players just to force penalties.
But then this team has been showing that kind of resilience all season, even before Müller arrived as one of the most high-profile signings in MLS history.
Head coach Jesper Sorensen, in his first season in the Vancouver dugout, has already steered this group to its first CONCACAF Champions Cup final – where it lost to Mexico’s Cruz Azul – and to a fourth straight Canadian Championship. Along the way, his team has had to deal with more than its fair share of setbacks and gut-checks.
Thomas Müller (right) brings a wealth of experience, both with the German national team and Bayern Munich of Germany's Bundesliga, into Vancouver's MLS playoff run.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
The Dane points to comeback victories over Monterrey and Pumas UNAM in the Champions Cup knockout rounds, as well as running roughshod over Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami in the semi-finals of that competition as proof to his team’s backbone.
“I think that’s because people really have a strong belief in what we’re doing, and the way we play, and also in the teammates, and that we have done it before means so much,” he said. “So we have the belief that we can always do good again.”
More proof of that resilience has risen to the surface in these MLS playoffs, with the Whitecaps winning a pair of penalty shootouts to eliminate first FC Dallas and then LAFC. In fact, the Whitecaps have won six of eight shootouts since 2022 across the MLS playoffs, the Canadian Championship and the Leagues Cup.
In terms of mentality monsters, there are few better in the big games than the German men’s national team, which has won six of the seven shootouts it has been involved in across the World Cup and European Championship.
For Müller, success from the spot starts with that collective spirit.
“As I said a lot of times, we are a very strong group, so we trust each other,” he said. “And trust doesn’t mean that we always believe that we will succeed, but we trust each other means for me, that we protect ourselves, that we support ourselves regardless the result.
“And that gives maybe all of our players that kind of security to be a little bit more confident in the shootouts. But that’s only theory.”
With the dragon from La-La Land slayed after a pair of previous playoff heartbreaks, Vancouver heads to San Diego to meet the No. 1 seed in the West on Saturday night. After an historic regular season, SDFC has designs on becoming just the second expansion team to win the MLS Cup, following in the footsteps of Bob Bradley’s Chicago Fire in 1998.
Vancouver will have to show more resilience than ever though, with an injury-decimated back line hit still further by the suspension earned by Blackmon for his red card.
Vancouver Whitecaps FC midfielder Ralph Priso (6) will have to continue to do more than is asked of him in Saturday's MLS semi-final, as the club will be without Tristan Blackmon due to suspension.Anne-Marie Sorvin/Reuters
The Whitecaps have embraced a next-man-up philosophy all season though, which has seen Ralph Priso, a midfielder by trade, pressed into emergency service in the back, a role in which he has barely missed a step.
For Priso, who is happy to play wherever he can get on the pitch, it will be yet another chance for the Whitecaps to display their resilience. And what better time than when their backs are against the wall once again?
“It’s going to be a good game for the neutrals between two of the best teams in the league,” he said. “And so it won’t be easy; hopefully we don’t suffer as much as we did in the LAFC game.
“But there will be moments where we will have to suffer and we’ll have to be together. But I think if anyone can do it, it’s us.”