You wait weeks for another derby game to come along and then you get four of them in eleven days.

One of the many great things about supporting Vancouver Whitecaps is that you’re never shy of games against your fiercest rivals.

We’re lucky here, we have both Canadian and Cascadian derbies and rivalries to look forward to, and each and every game is a heated occasion, full of passion.

The two kinds of games that always excite me the most are local derbies and Cup ties.

On Wednesday night we got both when Toronto came to town.

Sadly, it was a disappointingly sized crowd and the general Vancouver public let their team down in their national Cup competition by not packing out BC Place and roaring their Caps on to victory and a step closer to Champions League action.

Let’s hope they don’t do so again on Saturday for what promises to be an epic Cascadia Cup tie.

The team are playing their hearts out on the pitch and they need every Caps fan to do their bit off it.

Seattle Sounders come a calling and Montreal aside, there is no other team I hate more in all of Major League Soccer.

In this season of an unbalanced schedule, and more focus on games against Western Conference rivals, every single point is vital in these matches.

BC Place needs to become a fortress and the fans need to be loud and proud, for the visiting Seattle fans most certainly will be.

Despite not being competitive in MLS last season, Vancouver gave Seattle one hell of a match down in the Emerald City last June, topped off with Eric Hassli’s wonderstrike to salvage a point and turn the Frenchman into an internet sensation.

Over 500 Whitecaps fans made the trip south for an amazing evening off football and they created an amazing atmosphere to act as the soundtrack to the whole thing.

When Seattle played the return match in Vancouver, the last Caps game to be played at Empire, the Seattle fans travelled in numbers and were all over the stadium.

This is likely to be the case again on Saturday. Many have not bought tickets in the away fans section and have bought from Ticketmaster all over the stadium, as they plan to make a weekend of it.

You’ll know them because they’ll be green, loud and obnoxious. Well they are American after all. Watch out for their homage to “YMCA”. Big Village People fans apparently.

It’s going to be an amazing atmosphere and with the majority of the Seattle fans congregated together they will make a LOT of noise.

The importance of the main Vancouver supporters’ groups (the Southsiders and Curva Collective) working together and chanting in unison, and not separately, cannot be stressed enough.

But they can’t do it all on their own. Every Whitecaps fan in the stadium has to stand up and be counted for this one. Roar your team to victory from the very first kick and make BC Place the home fortress it deserves to be.

Vancouver Whitecaps and Seattle Sounders have a proud history and rivalry. It dates back to both club’s inaugural season in 1974 and has followed the clubs through the leagues and levels together.

The MLS version of the derby is amongst the most intense it has been.

The Caps are showing the Champions League final on the big screen before the kick off, so get along early and help build up the matchday atmosphere.

The world may be watching Bayern Munich take on Chelsea, but there’s only one football match that really matters on Saturday and that’s the Cascadian derby.

Please play your part in making it so.

About the author:
Michael McColl began writing about football in 1989 and has freelanced for various newspapers, magazines and websites in the UK. He moved to Vancouver in 2007 where he is the editor of “Away From the Numbers”, which can be currently found over on Canadian Soccer News. He is also a member of the North American Soccer Reporters association.
A proud member of the Vancouver Southsiders supporters club, his views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Southsiders organization.