Feb 17, 2017
Impact setting their 2017 sights on improvements
Ahead of the Rowdies Suncoast Invitational in Tampa Bay, the Montreal Impact look to implement improvements in search of the 2017 MLS Cup. Noel Butler has more.
By Noel Butler
Having spent the previous week getting reacquainted with Olympic Stadium, the Montreal Impact could not have picked a better time to head off to the Sunshine State this past Tuesday as Montreal shivers through a throwback winter week full of snow, plus all the ensuing chaos and travel disruption which that has caused here.
As like last preseason, the club is in St. Petersburg to take part in the Rowdies Suncoast Invitational where the friendly matches come thick and fast against Major League Soccer opponents, plus the United Soccer League’s Tampa Bay Rowdies, who themselves have designs in joining MLS in the near future as the league looks to expand to a total of 28 clubs.
A few days before leaving Montreal, the Impact held their annual members assembly for their supporters at a renowned downtown nightspot which is more commonly used as a concert venue and has previously hosted the likes of Prince, Lady Gaga and Adele.
During the assembly, Joey Saputo outlined the Impact’s bold vision for the next five years, both on and off the pitch. Quite remarkably for a club with a two decade-plus pedigree and history, its revenue and season-ticket base places the Impact in the middle of the MLS pack, which is far off the pace the Impact president envisioned when he and his family agreed in the spring of 2010 to pay a $40 million expansion fee to join the league for the 2012 season.
When factoring in that MLS is demanding a $150 million expansion fee today, Saputo has engineered a magnificent return on the original investment. But the club has yet to experience a profitable year. Black ink and a very first MLS Cup sit atop Saputo’s five-year plan going forward.
The search and preparation for that MLS Cup, Saputo expects, began in earnest as soon as the players reported back for preseason training towards the end of last month. This current penultimate phase of training camp down in Florida will provide the only meaningful time for the coaching and technical staff to analyze the players and team in match situations.
As much as the Impact fielded an inexperienced, youthful team against the Chicago Fire on Wednesday, a 4-1 drubbing at the hands of the worst team in MLS last season would not have been in Mauro Biello’s preseason plans. Making the playoffs for a third straight time under his custodianship, though, is certainly in his plans - as is making the Impact a better team and that includes the possibility of bringing in new players.
“We’re working on things to continue to improve the team," Biello told TSN.ca. "Obviously, we have some adjustments that are coming in June, notably in Blerim Džemaili, and there are a couple of other options we have right now that we are looking at in terms of adding to the squad. At the same time, it’s about continuing to work on our principles and finding the right cohesion that we want to go forward with this team. Obviously, every year we want to improve.”
One of those new players could well be 24-year old Argentine midfielder, Adrian Arregui. Although things did not work out with Lucas Ontivero, the Impact has had much luck with bringing Argentine players to MLS, namely Ignacio Piatti. The club currently has four Argentines in their 25-man squad.
Andrés Romero, who missed the entire 2016 season due to a horrific ACL tear suffered in Colorado back in October of 2015, will feel like a new signing. As Piatti has dazzled these past two seasons and Didier Drogba hogged the media spotlight, it’s widely forgotten that Romero was the Impact’s most outstanding player through 2014, and rightfully was awarded MVP honours following the 2014 season
One of the principles Biello’s team will adopt this season is from defensive positions. When transitioning into attack, to have less of a reliance on route-one football by punting the ball up field, the team will instead look to play the ball out. If you analyze how the Impact played under Biello last season - and as their excellent form away from home suggests - their style of play was more suited for the road. It was their home form that ultimately determined where they finished in the East. Att the All-Star break, the Impact was in the conversation for winning the conference, but by the end of the season, they had fallen down into fifth spot.
This upcoming season, the head coach fully intends for his team to be a far stronger proposition at home.
“It’s one of the things we wanted to address this year to perform better at home," Biello said. "We finished [the season] with five losses and five ties at home and those are a lot of points that we left on the table. If we had've won three of those 10 games, we were a Supporters' Shield team.
“This is something we want to continue to improve on and make sure this year when we play at Saputo Stadium it becomes very difficult for the opposition and we are able to play the game on our terms”
What will most certainly help in this regard is having a far stronger supporter base at home. The evidence so far certainly suggests the people of Montreal have responded with their wallets. Not surprisingly after such an emotional playoff rollercoaster that finally unravelled during extra time of that epic second leg of the Eastern Conference Final, season-ticket renewals are at an all-time high. Having sold 9,500 season tickets last season, the expectation is the Impact will finally surpass the 10,000-mark for the first time in club history by the time the doors to the 2017 season open at Stade Saputo on April 15 against Atlanta United.
Before that, the Impact open their season in Montreal on March 11 at Olympic Stadium. The club announced earlier today they have already sold over 32,000 tickets for the match against the MLS Cup champions, Seattle Sounders.