THE CANADIAN PRESS
MONTREAL -- After struggling to find their game through the season, few are surprised that the Montreal Impact and Vancouver Whitecaps woke up in time to grab playoff spots and march through to a first all-Canadian USL-1 final.
The Whitecaps play at home in the opening leg of the two game, total goals final on Saturday, followed by the second leg in Montreal a week later.
"It's good for soccer in Canada," Impact defender Nevio Pizzolitto said Tuesday. "It's a good rivalry, and it shows we're doing something right.
"And both clubs definitely deserve to be there."
The Whitecaps battled to the seventh and final playoff spot in the 11-team league, while Montreal managed fifth place with a late flurry of wins. Both then knocked off higher seeds to reach the final. The Whitecaps edged Portland 5-4 on aggregate and Montreal ousted Puerto Rico 4-2 in semifinal series that ended on Sunday.
Vancouver is seeking its second championship in a row and third in the last four years. It is also hopes to make it two titles in as many years under Icelandic coach Teitur Thordarson.
Montreal has also won the title twice, in 1994 and 2004, and is looking to make Marc Dos Santos a champion in his rookie season as head coach.
On Tuesday, the league announced that Dos Santos was among the four finalists for its coach of the year award.
The Impact were 0-3-1 when Dos Santos took over from the fired John Limniatis on May 12 and guided them to a 12-8-6 record.
But even he struggled early on, as the Impact were 6-8-5 on Aug. 1 and the playoff appeared to be a distant dream.
"He's extremely organized, which is something we needed at the time," Pizzolitto said of his 32-year-old coach. "He had a plan of how he wants us to play and we kept working on it in practice.
"When we didn't get results, we didn't change. We kept pushing through. And he got the players to believe in him -- that's the most important thing."
He also changed the formation from a 4-3-3 to a 4-4-2 and gradually, a team that had laboured to score goals finally saw some go in. The Impact had only 14 goals in their first 16 games, including a stretch of games without a goal in late June and July.
"We always believed that we could be champions from the beginning," Dos Santos said. "Things were tough but one problem was that there were so many injuries, and so many players in and out for different reasons -- cards, suspensions -- that it was tough just to get a team out there to play.
"Now, the guys are healthy, there are no suspensions and we have the guys together. The second thing is to believe in what you're doing. That's what brought us where we are today. So it's not a surprise for us to be in the final."
The Impact came into the season off a great high in 2008 with their surprising run to the quarter-finals of the inaugural CONCACAF Champions League -- capped by a first-leg quarter-final victory over Santos Laguna before more than 50,000 at Olympic Stadium -- to a crushing defeat in the second leg in Mexico in which they blew a 4-1 aggregate lead in the second half.
It is as though the psychological damage of the collapse in Mexico carried through to the 2009 season, although that has been denied repeatedly by players and coaches.
But the Impact were crushed by both Toronto FC and the Whitecaps early in the season in their four games in the Nutrilite Canadian Championship, which serves as qualifying for the CONCACAF competition.
"One of the secrets was in the locker room," said Dos Santos. "We just closed the doors.
"We stuck together as a team. We tried not to be influenced by what was being said outside our box."
Recently, they've looked more like the team they were last autumn, and they'll need to be to defeat a Vancouver squad that is also peaking at the right time, even if they came back and beat the Whitecaps in all three of their regular season meetings.
"Everything we went through can only help us," said Pizzolitto. "Last year we learned that we could do good things.
"This year, even though things didn't go so well, we kept talking about getting into the playoffs and making a difference then."
The final has two clubs that know each other well.
The Impact have five former Whitecaps -- Eduardo Sebrango, Joey Gjertsen, Tony Donatelli and back-up goalkeeper Srdan Dekanovic, -- while Vancouver striker Charles Gbeke and midfielder Martin Nash once played for Montreal.
Montreal midfielder David Testo, who won the Impact's 2009 MVP award, is also a former Whitecap.
"That puts a little sprinkle on top, for sure," added Pizzolitto. "It's a little bizarre, but it's good for us. We know Vancouver."
Gbeke led USL-1 with 12 goals while Marlon James had nine and Marcus Haber had eight. The top Impact scorer was Roberto Brown with seven.
It is that ability to strike at any moment that makes the Whitecaps dangerous, Dos Santos said.
"You need to be very careful giving up the outside because they're very good in the last third (of the field)," he said. "They can put crosses inside our box and they have big guys that jump very well inside the 18 (yard line).
"And on set plays, they have very good service from Martin Nash."
Other coaches nominated for coach of the year are Colin Clarke of Puerto Rico, who won last year, Martin Rennie of Carolina and Gavin Wilkinson of Portland.
The Impact welcomed back midfielder Rocco Placentino, who missed the second leg of the semifinal because he got married on the weekend. Placentino had informed the team he was getting married on Oct. 3, 2009 before he signed with them in 2007.
