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Analyst, TSN Radio 690 Montreal

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Just over 20 years ago, with a full-time professional soccer career beckoning, Mauro Biello was filling out inventory lists as a part-time shelf stacker in a Montreal area pharmacy.

Saturday evening Biello will fill out the team sheet as the interim head coach of the Montreal Impact.

In an era of a soccer world gone completely bonkers as it fully and completely strays from its origins where players, owners and management used to always hail from the local area, Biello’s appointment should be celebrated right across planet futbol.

Across the top 10 leagues in world soccer you can likely count on one hand the number of head coaches or managers who were born and grew up a healthy bike ride away from their local soccer stadium. You can narrow that list to a podium for those who’ve spent half their entire life with their local club.

For those still of the misguided belief Biello was only appointed due to “family connections”, I respectfully suggest you check the reliability of your sources.

No one who has ever worn an Impact jersey worked their cotton socks off to establish themselves in the manner Biello did. Such was his determination to forge out a soccer career. After all, not everyone’s born with the confidence and God-given talent of a Usain Bolt. Ask David Beckham’s sister how gangly and shy he was as a youngster.

When Biello retired as a player in fall 2009, a short month after helping the Impact win a third playoff championship, the club announced he would stay on as an assistant coach and assume the director of soccer schools position.

At the time, club president Joey Saputo stated, “Mauro embodies the Montreal Impact. At the start of his career, he fought to get his spot on the team and then had an exceptional career. All young soccer players should look to Mauro as an example. He has accomplished extraordinary things for the club, while at the same time serving as a pioneer for the development of soccer in Quebec.”

When factoring all that has occurred since, how very apt those words still are today.

When observing Biello’s very hesitant, initial steps into the coaching ranks during his dugout debut for the 2010 NASL season, I didn’t think he was at all cut from the coaching cloth. How very wrong I was.

A few matches in I realized what was missing. Biello comes free of histrionic and emotional outbursts, something which clearly defined all Impact coaches I’d ever seen previously. During the MLS era, Jesse Marsch and Marco Schällibaum wore their emotions on their sleeves, as did Frank Klopas, but to a far lesser extent.

Don’t get me wrong, being emotional can be a very good, beneficial thing. But you have to use it to your own best advantage, and that means not to allow it to cloud your judgement. Feel free to throw your toys out of the stroller, but don’t still be complaining about it a good 45-minutes or so later. The key to success is making the correct decisions in conjunction with objective and subjective analysis.

As a student of the game, this is a competitive advantage the recently turned 43 year old Biello has in his top drawer.

In his five-plus seasons as an assistant coach, Biello has learned on the job, sponging all up as he went along, his observational self very much at the forefront. Biello doesn’t just bleed Impact blue; he lives and breathes it, all in a quiet, very unassuming manner. Still waters run deepest.

What will also serve Biello well is all the adversity the Impact has endured since joining MLS. He’s witnessed it all, up close and very personally. Not to be overly harsh on his predecessors, but Biello will have learned far more of what not to do and needs to apply that knowledge going forward.

When asked what he envisions to be his biggest challenge making the step from assistant to head coach, Biello didn’t even have to think. “The management of the players,” he said to TSN.ca.

“When you’re an assistant you have to be able to manage the players in a certain way. When you’re the head coach you need to balance that where you want to get the best out of the player, but at the same time be firm enough to hold them accountable and to get them on board to what you want.”

Those new to the Impact likely and quite rightly think Biello’s biggest challenge will be to remain gainfully employed come the end of the season. With the firing of Klopas, the Impact seemingly maintain their historical record of having a new head coach with each passing new season in their search for success. A revolving door, but don’t let it hit you on the backside on the way out.

There is nothing more fleeting in soccer than success, just ask the José Mourinhos of the world. As an observer of the Impact since the halcyon days over at Centre Claude Robillard, way back in the mid 1990’s when on any given Saturday afternoon there seemed to be more people in club-issued attire than actual supporters, there is one thing the Impact requires now and for the foreseeable future that is far more rare and valuable a commodity than success.

It’s called stability. In that regard, the Impact has the perfect person and candidate in Biello.

Although only appointed on the interim basis, he fully intends shedding the interim tag and placing himself come season’s end in pole position to be offered the job on a permanent basis. An assertive, forthright attitude has not ever hindered anyone in their aspirations.

Those aspirations come full circle Saturday evening. Before that though comes something far more important for the Impact’s interim head coach: cherished time with his family.

“On Saturday I will still have my duties as a father. I will be able to clear my mind, and play with my kids. That’s for sure in the early part of the day, then start to focus on the game,” Biello said.

“I think in the end it’s important that you always have that balance of soccer and non-soccer activities to help you cope with the pressures of this job, and if I’m able to balance that I think I will be in a better position to make the right decisions when it comes to game time.”

I’m reliably informed that back in the day Biello was one of the better shelf stackers around. Quiet and unassuming, he went about his craft with the utmost dedication and willingness.

If, over the next two months, Biello successfully injects that philosophy into the mindset of all the players now under his charge there will be no need to retain any headhunting agency to oversee the appointment of a fourth head coach in five seasons for the Impact.

Two weeks ago the Impact faithful awaited Didier Drogba’s debut with bated breath. Saturday evening the 20,000 plus capacity crowd will witness Biello’s head coaching coming-out party at Saputo Stadium.

Pre-match, as Biello makes his customary walk from the tunnel and along the touchline to his seat in the Impact dugout, it will be to a rapturous standing ovation ringing in his ears. Meanwhile, some 200 paces away, the global music phenomena One Direction will be hitting the stage over at the Montreal Impact’s second home, Olympic Stadium.

Not even Drogba could have choreographed it better.

Montreal Impact vs Chicago Fire Live on TSN 690 and TSN690.ca – kick off 8 p.m. et / 5 p.m. pt