As remarkable as the Montreal Impact’s CONCACAF Champions League run has been, it has come at the cost of a slow start to the Major League Soccer season.
On Saturday in Texas, the Impact fell 3-0 to the Houston Dynamo, leaving them winless after four games with a record of 0-2-2.
What’s most regrettable about the results so far is that the Impact’s first four matches against D.C United, New England, Orlando and Houston were all winnable, or at least relatively easier games compared to those that that they will face as the season progresses.
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Looking back, D.C. was missing Chris Rolfe, Luis Silva and Fabián Espíndola; New England was without Jermaine Jones and was out of form; Orlando City, an expansion team, had eight players on international duty; and Houston is simply not a very formidable side (before Saturday, Owen Coyle’s men had only managed to score two goals in five games).
It is not the case that because the Impact are in the Champions League they have decided to disregard their MLS appointments. Against the Dynamo, Impact coach Frank Klopas fielded a strong starting 11 and they certainly entered the game with the mindset of winning it.
In the first half, the Impact were even quite surprising in the quality of their play. They pressed high up the field, recovered the ball on numerous occasions in the opposing half and enjoyed most of the possession—all things which they have struggled to do for more than a year.
But the attacking end-product was missing.
“We had a lot of the ball and had some good chances, but the final pass in the final third just was not there,” Klopas said after the game. “There were moments when our decision-making was not there even though we had a lot of possession.”
Not being able to find a suitable replacement for Marco Di Vaio in the off-season has cost the Impact in the league—they’ve only managed to score two goals in four games.
Jack McInerney doesn’t offer the physical strength that the Impact need in the attack. There were several times where the Impact’s players found themselves in good crossing positions on the edge of the Houston area but opted to try and dribble past one or two defenders instead of simply crossing the ball in the box. Without having any kind of aerial presence, the odds of a cross being successful are certainly diminished.
Ultimately, the mid-week game in Costa Rica against Alajuelense took its toll on the Impact as they slowly began to subside in the second half and Houston began to take advantage of Montreal’s sloppy and disjointed attacks.
Though the intense offensive display of the first half was admirable, given the evident fatigue from the Champions League Klopas should have adopted a more conservative approach and had his players pace themselves better. By the final 30 minutes, the Impact had exhausted all their energy and had little chance of getting back into the game.
With April’s league games against Chicago and San Jose rescheduled for September, the Impact’s focus will now be entirely devoted to the Champions League final home-and-home series with Mexican side Club America later this month.
But in the back of their minds, the Impact will undoubtedly carry some concern that the MLS season is beginning to resemble that of 2014.
Nick Sabetti is a Montreal-based writer. Follow him on Twitter