Canada got goals from veterans Christina Julien and Christine Sinclair, and the first-ever senior international marker from 18-year-old Amy Pietrangelo, as it beat Costa Rica 3-1 in their opening game of the Pan Am Games in Guadalajara, Mexico.

For the second week in a row, the Vancouver Whitecaps took advantage of a team in a tailspin.

But, in examining RSL’s 3-0 loss to the Whitecaps Thursday, you have to shake your head and try to think back to the spring, when the Royals were everybody’s shoo-in pick for the MLS Cup. Think back to when Real Salt Lake was one lousy goal away from winning the CONCACAF Champions League and making plans to head to Japan for the Club World Cup.

ebastien Le Toux is the MLS Player of the Month for September. The Philadelphia Union’s French forward got the award after the ballots from the membership of the North American Soccer Reporters were counted.

The Montreal Impact announced that three players from its NASL roster won’t be part of the team’s pre-MLS evaluation camp. And none of the six new players the Impact have invited to the camp carry Canadian passports.

The Whitecaps could not have had a worse opponent scheduled for the MLS opening of B.C. Place than the Portland Timbers. The Timbers not only, ahem. blessed the new Bell Pitch at B.C. Place with a 1-0 win in front of sold-out throng of 21,000, the Whitecaps’ Cascadia rivals had the chance to display just how wide the competitive gap is between the two teams that jumped from second division to MLS in 2011.

Joseph Di Chiara and Ashtone Morgan will both get their chances to earn their first-ever caps for the Canadian national team. The inclusion of the two youngsters highlights six changes made to the Canadian roster by national men’s team coach Stephen Hart ahead of World Cup qualifiers Oct. 7 in St. Lucia and Oct. 11 against Puerto Rico at Toronto’s BMO Field.

FC Edmonton hopes to learn from its mistakes when it faces the Fort Lauderdale Strikers in their NASL quarter-final on Saturday.

Both Dwayne De Rosario and Juan Pablo Angel scored four times in the past week. But, in the end, the Player of the Week balloting wasn’t close. The Canadian beat the Colombian handily, taking 13 out of 16 first-place votes from the membership of the North American Soccer Reporters.

Dwayne De Rosario has done a lot in his storied MLS career; four championships, MVP nominations, goals of the year. But he could do something this season that no other MLS player has done since the league kicked off in 1996; win the MVP award in a season in which the winner was traded.