From Niche Cache.
Herdman's time at Vancouver may have permanently come to an end. If so, head across to Toronto to join Dad?
With four games remaining in the MLS Next Pro season, Vancouver Whitecaps II have loaned Jay Herdman across to the CPL. There he joins a team which had six games left, positioned to make a run at the playoffs and maybe even for the championship. Not sure how to compare the two levels (American academy team versus Canadian semi-pro team) but this will mean consequential senior football for the next month or two.
The Whitecaps perspective is the trickier one. In the past, they’ve used the ol’ CPL loan deal as a prelude to releasing blokes. Herdman has had three short-term MLS stints this year – including making an MLS debut – but so have several other academy lads along the way. There’s a limit of four of those call-ups per year before you have to sign that player to a permanent contract, hence why Herdman’s been allowed to chill at the Olympics and with the reserves since the most recent of those call-ups back in April. And, to his credit, he’s been awesome for those reserves. Six goals and three assists in 20 matches. It’s been a breakthrough campaign for him.
However, at the same time as Herdman was loaned out, Jeevan Badwal and Nicolas Fleuriau Chateau were both given multi-year Whitecaps deals from out of that same VW2 team. This was right before rosters were frozen in both leagues so it was kind of a now-or-never situation (at least for this year).
Can’t say that Badwal (an attack-minded midfield) and Chateau (a striker) are totally different positional options than Herdman because they’re not. Maybe they were simply chosen instead of him? Maybe there wasn’t room at this time for JH but they still wanted to get him some senior experience ahead of next year? Thing is, his contract with VW2 expires at the end of the season so we can’t discount that he might have played his last game for the club he joined as a 13-year-old. This all remains to be seen.