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Vancouver extended its unbeaten streak to eight games and Minnesota United now is winless in five games after the Whitecaps’ 3-2 victory Saturday night at BC Place.
Loon busters Brian White and Simon Becher scored goals four minutes apart soon after halftime, breaking open a 1-1 draw for a two-goal margin the Whitecaps never fully surrendered.
The Loons have not won a game now since a 1-0 decision at St. Louis City SC on April 1.
They lost Saturday on the same day the team announced suspended two-time MLS All Star Emanuel Reynoso had arrived in Minnesota after holding out all season.
White scored his second goal of the game in the 52nd minute after he finished off a corner kick that had been knocked around the six-yard box three times with head or foot before White scored at the left post after colliding with Loons keeper Dayne St. Clair.
White ended up on the turf beyond the goal line, injured from the collision. He came out of the game three minutes later, being replaced by Becher.
It took Becher just a minute to score after Robin Lod misplayed a backward pass intended for a teammate, but Becher converted the turnover into a left-footed shot off St. Clair from inside the 18-yard box.
Becher was the one who broke the Loons’ hearts with a 98-minute goal that sent them home from Allianz Field with a 1-1 draw in March.
Recently acquired Loons attacker Sang Bin Jeong brought his team within 3-2 Saturday when he scored his first MLS goal in the 65th minute.
Lod countered his turnover not long before by threading a perfect pass to Jeong among three Vancouver defenders and Jeong on the run behind the defensive back line scored with an angled shot on a soft second touch.
He hobbled after he was injured in the 81st minute but stayed in the game because there were no substitution options at that point. He nearly tied the game just before the final whistle with a curling right-footed drive that just missing hitting the goal’s upper right corner.
Loons striker Mender García missed two prime scoring chances himself.
White and Loons center back Michael Boxall swapped first half goals, with White scoring first in the 17th minute and Boxall replying in the 33rd minute.
Boxall’s goal was the first goal the Whitecaps had allowed in 443 minutes. They had delivered four consecutive clean sheets – three of them by Saturday’s starter Yohei Takaoka – in that time.Vancouver hadn’t allowed a goal since García’s 40th minute goal in the two teams’ late 1-1 draw at Allianz Field on March 25.
White scored his third goal this season – the 50th in his career – and the Whitecaps’ first in three games after Loons defensive midfielder and captain Wil Trapp turned the ball over at midfield. Andres Cubas graciously accepted it and threat a perfect pass to White on the right behind the Loons’ backline
With a free run toward the goal, White calmly rolled the ball by Loons keeper Dayne St. Clair, who had come far off his line without success.
Boxall scored his first goal this season by cleaning up a Sang Bin Jeong corner kick that Takaoka tried to leap and catch, but couldn’t grab it. It fell to the turf within three yards of the goal line and Boxall directed it with his foot out of traffic and into the goal.White had a short-range shot to regain the lead just before halftime, but St. Clair made a stretching save with his foot that left White gesturing in disbelief.
Substitute Joseph Rosales entered the game in the 29th minute for starting striker Luis Amarilla. Rosales moved into Jeong’s spot alongside Robin Lod and Franco Fragapane while Jeong moved up to Amarilla’s striker spot.
Loons midfielder Kervin Arriaga didn’t travel with the team to Vancouver on Thursday, four days after he had missed a scoreless draw with FC Dallas that kept the Loons winless at Allianz Field.
He did so because of a hamstring injury that Heath thought might be good enough to have Arriaga fly in on his own just before the game. It wasn’t.
The Star Tribune did not send the writer of this article to the game. This was written using a broadcast, interviews and other material.
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