Oct 25, 2017
Impact close the book on a disappointing season
Not only did the Impact squander away the 2017 season, their relevance in the marketplace also took a hammering, Noel Butler writes.
By Noel Butler
At this time last year, the Montreal Impact were about to embark on a memorable postseason journey. A year later, there is no playoff spot after a season fraught with the kind of tension and adversity one could associate with a club mired in a season-long relegation battle.
As we are all aware now, head coach Mauro Biello and his entire staff paid the ultimate price for 2017’s inadequacies. But they aren’t the only ones to blame for how things played out in a season that didn’t deliver – either on or off the pitch
It is well past time for the Impact players to take a long, hard look at themselves in the mirror. They’re the ones who squandered too many gilt-edged scoring opportunities. The players were individually and collectively bereft of ideas when creativity and guile were desperately needed to help turn a game in their favour. Did we mention the woeful defending? There were far too many soft and preventable goals conceded all season long.
You attack as a team and you defend as one too. Mulligans are for the golf course. Time after time, match after match, midfielder Blerim Džemaili left gaping holes as wide as the St. Lawrence Seaway as he surged forward.
Yes, Džemaili scored goals, including a few crucial markers that would have graced any football pitch, and formed a decent partnership with Ignacio Piatti. However, the most novice scout would have observed the glaring defensive deficiency in the Swiss international’s MLS game. It makes you wonder if the 31-year-old Džemaili even listened to Biello and his staff.
Senior management must also hold their hands up here to a season which should have been, and easily could have been, every bit as memorable as 2016.
With the Impact getting so close to an MLS Cup place after only five years in the league, it was unfathomable that the club didn’t go out in the off-season and acquire the Grade-A talent that was available and so obviously required to take the Impact to the next level.
It was also difficult to understand why Matteo Mancosu and Dominic Oduro were rewarded for a few vintage playoff performances with new contracts in the off-season that were far richer than they deserved. Remember: The Impact struggled through the 2016 regular season, and limped into the playoffs as victors of a lowly 11 games out of 34. Ironically, the Impact returned the very same number of wins his season.
Then factor in the off-season strengthening conducted by all of Montreal’s Eastern Conference rivals. The icing on that particular cake was the arrival into MLS of Atlanta United, an expansion club that became one of the best storylines of 2017.
It’s wholeheartedly accepted that Montreal is a fickle sports market – likely one of the most delicate in all of North America. Not only did the Impact squander away the 2017 season, their relevance in the marketplace also took a hammering. The fickle soccer fans were exiting in droves. Stade Saputo sellouts were the norm through 2016, but blocks of empty blue seats was the backdrop to the action on the pitch in 2017. The Impact will most certainly return a downturn in attendance when measured against 2016. You can be guaranteed that the season ticket retention rate will also drop significantly.
Signing Piatti through 2019, with an option for 2020, will help marginally but, as we witnessed with the Didier Drogba signing, substantial gains at the Stade Saputo box office will only occur if a marquee name is signed by the Impact. The club does have wiggle room in the Designated Player stakes.
Impact president Joey Saputo said at his press conference on Monday that the alarm bells first started ringing for him all the way back in April, and continued to sound throughout the season. That can only lead you to wonder why reinforcements weren’t brought in via a trade or a spending splurge in the summer window.
Instead, outside of Džemaili, all the other player changes this season were like for like and not a noticeable upgrade to the players already at Biello’s disposal.
Finally, the retiring Patrice Bernier should have been convinced to play one more season in blue. The club captain, and to most the greatest Impact player ever, was a true ambassador both on and off the pitch. The local boy’s unbridled popularity transcends his profession.
Bernier might be 38, but his game is entirely predicated on his supreme football intelligence. As the great Johan Cruyff once noted, football is a game played with the head, not the legs.
The Impact’s 2017 season was costly on and off the pitch. The fix will be far more expensive.