Vancouver Whitecaps heading to Europe for pre-season training in 2017: Robinson

VANCOUVER — The Vancouver Whitecaps plan on mixing things up ahead of next season.

After disappointing starts the last two years, and with the CONCACAF Champions League quarter-finals set to get underway in February, head coach Carl Robinson says he will be taking his team to Europe in hopes of increasing the tempo in preparation for the 2017 campaign.

“I want to shake it up,” the Welshman said on a conference call Thursday. “Part of me reviewing (this) season was analyzing what was good at the start of the year and what wasn’t.”

A long shot to make the playoffs in Major League Soccer with five games left on the schedule, the Whitecaps qualified for the Champions League knockout stage on Tuesday after defeating Sporting Kansas City 2-1, and Robinson wants to make sure his players are sharp when the competition resumes this winter.

“We’ll have to be right on top form earlier, up to speed earlier,” he said. “That means (higher) fitness levels earlier.”

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Vancouver has held training camps and played exhibition games in a variety of locations across the United States since joining MLS in 2011, but Robinson wasn’t happy with his team’s performances out of the gate in either 2015 or 2016.

The hope is that playing matches against European clubs in the middle of their seasons will benefit the Whitecaps when they return to North America.

“We need to get up to speed a lot quicker,” said Robinson, whose team visits the Seattle Sounders on Saturday in MLS action. “We know those (opposing) players are going to be 100 per cent fit when we play them in January.”

Robinson said taking the Whitecaps across the Atlantic Ocean — a formal announcement on the specifics will come later — isn’t meant as a slight against the MLS sides they’ve played in past pre-seasons.

“You’re playing against players that are also not fit and you’re able to coast games based on you being 60, 70 per cent fit and them being 60, 70 per cent fit,” he said. “With the Champions League, I need my players who are 60, 70 per cent fit to be playing against players that are 100 per cent fit because it’s harder for them.”

Joshua Clipperton, The Canadian Press