The Vancouver Whitecaps are hoping history repeats itself after another home disappointment on opening weekend.

The club fell 3-2 to the Montreal Impact on Sunday, a loss that in many ways mirrored Vancouver’s 3-1 defeat to Toronto FC at B.C. Place Stadium on the first day of the 2015 season.

The Whitecaps won their next two games at expansion Orlando City FC and the lowly Chicago Fire last year to set the stage for a franchise-record 53-point campaign that would include the top away record in Major League Soccer at 7-7-3.

But Vancouver faces a much tougher test over the next two weeks to start 2016, beginning Saturday at Sporting Kansas City before a visit to the Seattle Sounders on March 19.

“When you lose at home it always hurts,” said Whitecaps head coach Carl Robinson. “Whether you’re playing Seattle or K.C. after, you have to play all the teams. It’s a very tough league. There’s not much difference between the teams.

“It does make it a little bit more important. But we’ll brush ourselves down and we’ll go (to Kansas City) full of confidence because we played some good stuff at certain times (against Montreal). We’ve just got to limit the bad goals.”

Those bad goals, not surprisingly, were the result of some shockingly poor defending. Impact midfielder Ignacio Piatti scored twice, including one where he stepped past four Vancouver players in quick succession — a sequence Robinson likened to a video game.

“Everybody has a great attitude, but we know we have to be sharper and we can be sharper,” said Whitecaps defender Kendall Waston. “Last season we lost our first game and got to the playoffs. This year we know we can do it, but we’ve got to work harder.”

Right back Fraser Aird, who was playing his first game for Vancouver, was victimized by Piatti early against Montreal, but like many of his teammates showed improvement after halftime as the Whitecaps pushed to get something out of the game.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a crisis,” said the 21-year-old Canadian international. “We’re going to get better.”

Kansas City opened its schedule with a 1-0 victory in Seattle on Sunday, and beat Vancouver in both meetings last season, including a chaotic 4-3 comeback victory at Sporting Park in August.

“We played an excellent away game for 90 minutes and we conceded two in the last minute,” said Robinson. “We’ve got to go try and win there this time.”

Vancouver has never won at Kansas City, a team that lost star striker Krisztian Nemeth this winter, but added veteran midfielders Brad Davis and Justin Mapp, along with forward Diego Rubio.

“They’re a good team,” said Robinson. “We’re a good team on our day as well. These early games are really just sort of testing the water to see who gets off to a good start or who gets off to a flyer. They certainly did last week with a good away victory.

“We’ve got to try and get our first victory on the board.”

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