Did Vancouver Whitecaps eat something bad? Stomach bug hits team hard

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Vancouver Whitecaps fans must have felt sick watching their team get dismantled 5-0 by Cruz Azul in last weekend’s CONCACAF Champions Cup final in Mexico City.

The team knows how they feel, too. At least 30 people, including more than half the team, was hit by a gastrointestinal issue on their way back from Mexico, which has prevented the Vancouver Whitecaps from training in full for the past two days.

“You know, in hindsight, everyone felt ill during the game,” Caps CEO Axel Schuster joked Thursday.

“Maybe it’s better to have all negatives in one week this year. I will take that. If you have everything negative and all frustration packed in one week, then it’s OK.”

It was the Monday after the travelling party returned when the symptoms ravaged the group. They had an off day Tuesday, but training was cancelled Wednesday and Thursday as the team tried to regain its health.

The Whitecaps are scheduled to host the Seattle Sounders on Sunday evening (6 p.m. PT), and were already set to have nine players miss the game because of national team call-ups. But Schuster said the game hasn’t been postponed, and much would depend on Friday’s training and testing results.

There is a health and safety protocol in place that the league could trigger should player safety be deemed at risk, but that decision hasn’t been made yet.

“We are now more or less working through, from day to day, how the situation evolves and changes, and what that means for training tomorrow,” said Schuster. “I don’t have an answer yet, but that we expect that things hopefully become better from day to day.

“… We also work with the health authorities in British Columbia, together with the infection disease experts, because we wanted to make it very clear right from the beginning to the league that we’re not making anything up, that this is a real, real, real problem that we are dealing with.”

Asked if there was any suggestion of foul play, a club spokesperson said there wasn’t. Whether it was a case of the team being served a bad meal or whether it was an illness contracted through other means is being investigated. As part of their preparation for Sunday’s final, the team secured their own chef in hopes of avoiding any food-related issues. The likely culprit, judging by the timeline and those who were affected compared to those who travelled separately, narrowed it down to post-game meals.

pjohnston@postmedia.com