MONTREAL – You can’t really blame Montreal Impact coach Frank Klopas for not renewing Matteo Ferrari’s contract this week.
It’s not so much because the defender takes up a big chunk of the Impact’s salary cap or that he’s 35. It’s that he talks too much.
Obviously for the media and for the fans it’s been great to have a player such as Ferrari who has always been willing to speak his mind. But it hasn’t made life simple for the Impact.
One of his more blunt moments came back in February when he expressed his concern that the Impact hadn’t replaced any of the key players it had lost in the off-season. Though it was a very reasonable opinion and one that nearly everyone shared, if you really have the club’s interests at heart, that’s not a view you should be sharing in public.
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Ferrari was an assistant captain on this team. Part of a captain’s responsibility should be to always defend the club no matter what, even if it means lying about a bad situation. His lack of sensitivity on this issue should really make one strongly question what kind of leader he was for Montreal, or if he was one at all.
On Saturday, Ferrari wasn’t thinking about the Impact’s reputation when, on the day after he was cut by the team, he scheduled his very own press conference at the Ritz Carlton, where he shed some light on his unhappy situation this past year.
“You always appreciated me because I’m honest. It’s the time to say the truth to everybody,” Ferrari said, just before he began to recount the events which led to his leaving the team.
His story raises many troubling questions, foremost among them is this: Is there is a plan in place to turn this team around?
Ferrari remembers how disillusioned he was three months ago with the situation the Impact found themselves in—sitting last in the standings and having already lost all hope of making the playoffs. He says he felt “empty and without motivation.” At a later date, he asked the club to be traded, because he “wanted a new experience” and he felt like his “job (in Montreal) was done.”
One month ago, he said, (in reality it was probably sometime before the Sept. 15 MLS roster deadline) the Impact received a trade offer for him from a team that is currently in the playoffs. It was an offer that was rejected by Montreal because, as he remembers being told by Klopas, he was “too important for the team, even if the season was over.”
And finally, on Friday afternoon, Klopas decided not to exercise Ferrari’s contract option, citing a need to create salary cap space.
The Italian defender’s testimony immediately raises another question: Klopas could have gotten something from him in a trade in September, but instead lost him for nothing. Why is that? Did Klopas not know a month and a half ago that he wouldn’t pick up Ferrari’s option, even after the player had made it clear that he wasn’t happy and wanted to move on?
And here’s another pressing question: Do Klopas and the Impact even have a clear plan for next season? Ferrari says he never got an answer, which was why he had already made his mind up well before last week that he wouldn’t be coming back.
“I asked to meet the club many times, but they didn’t have answers, because they didn’t know what was going to be next season,” he said. “Maybe they know right now, but at that time, one month ago, two months ago, the answer was like, ‘I don’t even know if I’m going to be here next year’.”
Ferrari’s departure certainly leaves the Impact with big shoes to fill in central defence and with forward Marco Di Vaio also gone and no signings to speak of, the Impact enter the off-season practically spineless. And so how on earth are they going to be ready in time for the first leg of the CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinal against Pachuca in February?
Do they even have replacements lined up?
“I didn’t get any answer, because nobody was in a position to give me an answer,” Ferrari said. “You lose (Di Vaio), for example, and I’m sure the team is going to try to replace him, but you want to know right now who’s going to be in the place of Marco because the game is in February. It’s not in June, and nobody can answer so that for me is the signal that there is something not clear.”
The Impact will at least be able to take some comfort in the fact that they won’t need to answer for Ferrari’s questioning any longer.
Nick Sabetti is a Montreal-based writer. Follow him on Twitter