Although the CONCACAF Champions League is less than a decade old, the origins of the most important competition on our football continent, just as they do for their UEFA counterpart, go back over 50 years.
The highly prestigious daily French sports newspaper, L'Équipe, was pivotal in giving birth to 1955’s inaugural European Cup. Having observed UEFA’s success for staging a midweek nighttime competition, seven years later CONCACAF clubs participated for the first time in their very own Champions’ Cup. As Real Madrid has dominated Europe, the same could be said of Mexican clubs in CONCACAF.
This season, though, and right on the heels of an inspiring Brazil 2014 showing, two of the four remaining clubs, Alajuelense and SC Herediano, are Costa Rican. The feat is made all the more impressive when your factor in that Costa Rica only receives two spots in the 24-club competition - this for a nation which has a smaller population than Toronto’s (With the Impact our sole representative, Canada is also hitting the 100 per cent mark.)
Legendary Mexican powerhouse, América, rounds out CONCACAF’s Final Four, which gets under way on St. Patrick's Day when Sporting Club Herediano will welcome in América to the Estadio Eladio Rosabal Cordero in Heredia, Costa Rica.
Then, some 24-hours later ,the Olympic Stadium will play host as the Impact looks to continue one of the more improbable runs ever witnessed in the CONCACAF Champions League or even in UEFA Champions League history, for that matter. Don’t forget we’re talking about a club that finished bottom of its domestic league. With not much hope given last summer of even getting out of their group, the Impact are giant killers in every sense.
Given a bye week by Major League Soccer,the Impact’s task starting next Wednesday evening becomes marginally easier, as does the fact that their opponents play a massive league match when third-place Alajuelense visit sixth-place Uruguay in Primera División Verano play on Sunday afternoon. This will mark Alajuelense’s third and final league game over a less than ideal eight-day span. Impact players will have had a full 10 nights of sleep, rest and recuperation in their own beds since they last took to the pitch, a 1-0 MLS season-opening loss to DC United on March 7.
After Sunday afternoon’s match, Alajuelense are then faced with the immediate and arduous task of travelling the 4,000-plus kilometres to Montreal and leaving behind the high humid mid-20s temperatures they are used to these days for a city expecting over 10 centimetres of snow in the next 48 hours. Temperatures in Montreal are scheduled to drop to -12 C come next Wednesday night.
It seems even Mother Earth, herself, has become an Impact supporter over these past few weeks since that evening when close to 40,000 packed into Olympic Stadium to witness one of the greatest ever conclusions to a match anywhere on Planet Futbol since Sergio Aguero dragged a crying and screaming Manchester City to the 2012 title on that famous Sunday afternoon in Manchester.
With the Impact announcing early Friday that over 25,000 tickets have already been sold for the first leg match and factoring in Montreal’s famous 11th-hour football habits, you can be rest assured that a crowd of over 40,000, likely closer to 50,000, will pass through Olympic Stadium turnstiles next Wednesday night.
What can absolutely not repeat itself was the appalling way a stadium, which was built for the 1976 Summer Olympics, was unable to correctly deal with the crowd on March 3. This was not at all down to everyone arriving at the same time, in fact ,far from it.
I have heard from season-ticket holders that their tickets did not scan and some were refused entry. Many who did leave before Cameron Porter’s football life was changed forever did so, it seems, in complete fear of what occurred on their way into Olympic Stadium when it appeared every single parking lot was closed with huge line-ups to get into the stadium, the likes of which One Direction or Justin Bieber can only dream. Tempers, tension and frustration were clearly evident in the cold nighttime air. This is health and safety at stake here.
In response to this failure from the Olympic Stadium, over the intervening period, senior Impact officials have held top-level meetings with the administrative body, the Olympic Installations Board, to ensure beyond a doubt that there is no repeat. This process has also involved the Canadian Soccer Association. Alongside this, the Impact themselves have held internal meetings. One cannot ever put enough preparation into the planning of an event. Especially so, a sporting event of this scope and scale.
Over their two-plus decade history, the Impact have played in a number of decisive and highly memorable matches, since they lifted their first-ever piece of silverware back in 1994. Wednesday at Olympic Stadium is, without a shadow of a doubt and on a number of integral levels, the most important home match in club history. It's a showcase that money can't buy for the new casual supporter and, by the same token, a thoroughly well deserved reward for the long term season-ticket holder and Impact’s most passionate fans, the proper supporters who have stood toe-to-toe for their club since the league’s 19th franchise joined MLS back in 2012.
The fact the Impact play in the best league North America offers seems to be lost on most of those rapidly increasing number of football aficionados who could bore you senseless telling you what Ronaldo had for breakfast or why Wayne Rooney prefers blondes over brunettes and how Lionel Messi and Cesc Fabregas have likely visited more casinos than even Floyd Mayweather. Yet, these same people couldn’t tell you why Laurent Ciman spent June 2014 in Brazil with 22 of his fellow countrymen.
Hundreds and hundreds of them downed work tools last Wednesday afternoon to take in one of the most thoroughly compelling Round of 16 matches in UEFA Champions League history (or was it a visit the dentist?) when of Paris St-Germain, deservedly so, defied much more than the odds and heroically overcame a pathetic, brooding Chelsea.
I very much look forward to seeing these very passionate and highly knowledgeable football folks come out in very large numbers to Olympic Stadium on March 18. After all, what really is the point in getting yourself all worked up screaming at a TV screen when you can actually take in the real thing in support of your local football team? A local football team, by the way, which was founded just a decade or so after PSG were formed and, just like Chelsea did through the mid-1980s, played their football in the second division. Plus, as a bonus, you might get to sit near or catch a glimpse of a number of high-profile personalities who will most certainly be amongst one of the biggest football crowds in Olympic Stadium history.
Only time will tell if PSG will join the Impact in making club history themselves this season by finally reaching UEFA’s Final Four.
Noel.Butler@BellMedia.ca
@TheSoccerNoel on Twitter
Alajuelense vs. Impact in CONCACAF Champions League action is LIVE on TSN Radio 690 Montreal on Wednesday, March 18 at 8pm et/5pm pt.