VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — Fafá Picault had a first-half goal, Stuart Armstrong scored late in his second career appearance and the Vancouver Whitecaps beat the San Jose Earthquakes 2-0 on Saturday night.
The Whitecaps took a 1-0 lead in the 35th minute on a goal by Picault and took it into the break. Picault used his head to score off an assist from Ryan Gauld on a corner kick. It was his ninth goal of the season and the 11th assist for Gauld.
The Quakes appeared to tie the game in the 68th minute when Ousseni Bouda scored on a feed from Cristian Espinoza, but he was ruled offside.
Armstrong gave Vancouver a two-goal lead in the 86th minute with his first goal of the season. It came after he substituted for Alessandro Schöpf in the 84th.
Daniel De Sousa Britto had a career-high nine saves in his seventh start of the season for San Jose (5-21-2, 17 points), including one on a point blank Picault header in the 21st minute and another on Ali Ahmed a minute later.
Yohei Takaoka finished with two saves to earn his seventh shutout of the season for Vancouver (13-8-6, 45 points).
“We started the game decently, had good energy. We played three at the back to try and deal with their two forwards. They’ve got dangerous players there and we struggled a bit with some runs from midfield. They went past us,” interim head coach Ian Russell said to reporters after the game.
“We tried some tactical changes during the game and created some chances. Bouda had a good chance; he was offside. We didn’t generate enough in attack and defended a lot.”
Defender Paul Marie was more direct in his assessment.
“Tonight the mentality wasn’t right. We know that,” he said. “We were supposed to be on the front foot and we weren’t. We definitely have to shift our focus to Seattle and come out at 200%.”
The Earthquakes will stay on the road in the Northwest to play the Seattle Sounders on Wednesday. The Whitecaps hit the road to play the Houston Dynamo on Wednesday.
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