VANCOUVER — The Vancouver Whitecaps have a French Connection in the making.

The club acquired Philadelphia Union all-star forward Sebastien Le Toux on Tuesday for allocation money, setting up a potential Caps attack with Le Toux and fellow Frenchman Eric Hassli as the two front men.

“I definitely think they can play together,” Whitecaps head coach Martin Rennie said during a conference call after the trade. “I think Eric’s best quality is his ability to hold the ball up and play with his back to goal. Sebastien’s best quality is his ability to run in behind and run into channels and run off a striker like that.”

Le Toux looks forward to his potential new partnership with Hassli.

“It will be great to be with him on the same team and try to play together and make things happen,” he said in a conference call from Philadelphia.

Rennie should get a first-hand look at his new French tandem this week after Le Toux joins the Whitecaps for pre-season training in Arizona.

The 28-year-old forward — who scored 25 goals for Philadelphia and added 20 assists in 62 regular-season appearances the past two seasons — was an MLS all-star in 2010, when he scored 14 goals after Philadelphia acquired him from the Seattle Sounders in the league expansion draft.

He scored one goal in two playoff games against the Houston Dynamo last year.

Le Toux recently had a one-week trial with English Premier League side Bolton but wasn’t offered a contract and Rennie pounced on the opportunity to bring him to Vancouver.

“Once it was presented to us, it was a great opportunity that we had to take,” he said.

The Whitecaps had brief discussions with Philadelphia last season about Le Toux’s availability.

Rennie likes Le Toux’s work rate as much as his ability to score and set up goals.

“We needed to add more MLS experience and he’s been one of the league’s top scorers the past two years and brings a great work ethic,” he said. “When our team doesn’t have the ball, he’s a guy who works really, really hard to get it back. He’s super fit and can run all day.”

Rennie said the six-foot, 155-pound Le Toux is probably more dangerous when playing from a central position but is versatile and can play on the wing as well.

The addition of Le Toux gives the Whitecaps an abundance of forwards and attacking players and more roster moves to deal with that situation would seem likely.

He joins Vancouver midfielder/forwards Davide Chiumiento, Atiba Harris and Lee Nguyen and forwards Hassli, Darren Mattocks, Omar Salgado, Camilo Sanvezzo and Long Tan as attacking options for the club.

But Rennie insists the club doesn’t have a glut of attacking players.

“I don’t think we need any more but I also think some people look at certain players as strikers or forwards when, in my opinion, they’re more midfielders or wide players,” he said.

Le Toux is no stranger to Vancouver, as he played against the Whitecaps during the 2007 and 2008 seasons with the USL-1 Sounders squad before the team moved to MLS — scoring three goals and one assist in six games against Vancouver.

He didn’t appear pleased when he first found out about the trade on Tuesday.

“Just got traded to Vancouver!” Le Toux said on his Twitter account. “Saddest day for me in my Philadelphia Union story . . . Still can’t believe it.”

But he was more positive about his situation later in the day.

“I’m very happy to be going back to the West Coast,” he told reporters during the conference call. “It’s a great city to live in and I really have great memories over there.”

Le Toux played with Caps defender Jordan Harvey and goalkeeper Brad Knighton in Philadelphia the past two years and is familiar with other Vancouver players such as Hassli, Joe Cannon and Jay DeMerit.

He has his U.S. green card so he doesn’t count as a foreign player on the Whitecaps roster, leaving the club free to use an international player slot to acquire an experienced midfielder if it wants to.

Despite his 2010 all-star status, Le Toux was only the seventh-highest-paid player on the Union roster last year — with $179,000 in guaranteed compensation, according to the MLS Players Union.

That dollars-to-goals ratio sparkles when compared with recently departed Whitecaps designated player Mustapha Jarju, who made about $427,000 a season but had no goals or assists in 10 appearances last year.

Union manager Peter Nowak said it wasn’t an easy decision to trade Le Toux but felt it was in the best interests of his club.

“We are confident that the allocation money we receive will provide the flexibility for us to compile the best possible roster for 2012 and beyond,” he said in a statement.

Vancouver Sun

bconstantineau@vancouversun.com