Over the years, Joey Saputo has often described himself as someone who hates to lose, and who hates to lose even more than he likes to win. But for most of his presidency and ownership of the Montreal Impact, Saputo has only ever had to endure defeat in small doses.
Prior to joining Major League Soccer in 2012, the Impact were a mostly dominant force in the rickety and obscure lower divisions of North American soccer. Save for the club’s inception year in 1993 that ended in a last place finish in what was then known as the American Professional Soccer League, the club enjoyed lots of success. On the odd occasion when the Impact did struggle, lifting themselves up the standings always seemed like a rather straightforward procedure. Of course, it was easy in those days for Saputo to throw his financial weight around given that the competition wasn’t exactly formidable, especially with names such as the Los Angeles Salsa and the Syracuse Salty Dogs.
Following a respectable expansion campaign in MLS and a second year that began brilliantly but which spiraled into a state of turmoil by the end, Saputo and the Impact endured a 2014 season that was entirely new to them in that it involved losing to an extent that was unprecedented. The Impact finished in last place with an awful record of 6-18-10, which was easily their worst season since that very first one in 1993.
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As the club gets set for their fourth year in MLS, the biggest concern for the Impact, and one exposed by its failures on the field over the last year and a half, is that they are lagging behind the best teams in MLS from an organizational standpoint and last season’s debacle could become a regular occurrence if the situation inside the club doesn’t improve.
It was interesting to observe that after a third of the way through 2014, when confronted with the bleak reality of a roster that was grossly inadequate, the club tried to solve the issue in much the same as it would have done while in the lower divisions. Erstwhile sporting director Nick De Santis frantically tried to revamp the roster as the season was ongoing, however the results remained the same. The days of the Salsa and the Salty Dogs were truly no more.
After a four-year tenure, De Santis was axed later in the summer, in a move that Saputo explained was difficult given that De Santis was a very close friend, but that was also necessary because it was after all a “results based business” and the results since July 2013 had not been good enough.
What appeared at the time like a watershed moment for the Impact, where Saputo would seek to steer the club in a new direction under “a new structure” and, especially, under new personnel more suited to the task of guiding a team through the complicated MLS landscape, ultimately turned out to be nothing more than hot air. In February, six months after being relieved of his duties as sporting director, De Santis was named vice-president of international relations and technical development, a title which is really little more than a masquerade—he’s still in the same position as far as the club’s technical chain-of-command is concerned and he still possesses many of the same key functions as before.
One of the reasons Saputo gave for relieving De Santis of his duties as sporting director was that he noticed confusion among the players concerning the question of whom between De Santis and coach Frank Klopas was actually in charge at the club.
“Players will question who the boss is and who’s making decisions. You have European players that came in that were part of Nick (De Santis) bringing in and there’s other players that Frank (Klopas) wanted,” Saputo said. “If the coach tells you something or if you’re questioning something, it’s easy to go up to the sporting director [and complain about the coach]—and I’m not saying it happened—but we just want to eliminate that and we wanted the message to be clear that Frank is ultimately the one that’s taking the decision on the players.
“We didn’t want any confusion, if there was confusion.”
Oddly enough, after promising to introduce a new structure at the club, Saputo has simply restored the same dysfunctional setup, and this time it’s bound to create even more confusion now that De Santis’ new role is more ambiguous.
The one aspect that was different about this season compared to others for the Impact was that Saputo decided to retain his coach despite the awful results on the field. If there was a coach in the Impact’s history who deserved to see the exit door it was most definitely Klopas, but because he was the Impact’s third coaching hire in three years, firing him would not have reflected well on the club. Instead, Saputo told the media in July that he was going to give carte blanche to Klopas to build the team he wanted for 2015, but that didn’t happen.
Klopas was forced to work in tandem with De Santis and newly appointed technical director Adam Braz to assemble the squad. Klopas wasn’t tasked with searching for a new technical director, instead it was chosen for him. De Santis reached out to Braz—a former Impact player and team manager—and a deal was reached soon afterwards. At the press conference held to announce Braz’ appointment, Impact vice-president Richard Legendre admitted that Braz, who had spent the last year working real estate in Florida and who didn’t have any prior experience as a technical director, was the only person the club had interviewed for the role.
After the New Year, Niko Kounenakis, who Klopas had handpicked as his assistant coach a year ago, was replaced by Enzo Concina, another former Impact player who at least comes with notable experience having been an assistant at both Napoli and Inter Milan in Italy’s Serie A, as well as D.C United in MLS. It is very likely that the Impact also brought Concina over to Montreal as an alternative to Klopas should things not go well again this season. Concina was, after all, one of the candidates to replace Jesse Marsch after he was fired in 2012.
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Klopas, Braz and De Santis eventually brought 11 new players to the Impact, making it such that Montreal will look a very different team this year. The most notable additions are Belgium international defender Laurent Ciman, defender Bakary Soumare, and midfielders Marco Donadel and Nigel Reo-Coker, all four of whom were captains of at least one of their respective clubs during their careers. The Impact hope they’ll bring leadership qualities and defensive solidity to a team that last year suffered from infighting inside the locker room and that had one of the worst defensive records in MLS.
The one area where the Impact will have most certainly weakened is at the striker position. Goal scorer Marco Di Vaio retired after 2014 and the Impact couldn’t find a replacement for him in the form of a designated player. Saputo admitted that they were close to securing Alberto Gilardino from Chinese side Guangzhou Evergrande, but the Italian international eventually moved back to his former club Fiorentina in Serie A.
Although the Impact will have to wait until the summer to secure a DP striker, they will at least be able to count on playmaker Ignacio Piatti from the beginning of the season. The 29-year-old Argentine was sensational after coming over from Copa Libertadores champions San Lorenzo last August and has the quality to post big numbers in MLS in 2015.
As much as the Impact’s roster has improved, so has that of just about every other team in MLS. Therefore, it’s difficult to predict where the Impact will end up in the standings, though this season would certainly be the ideal time to make the playoffs considering that six teams in the East as opposed to five will get to qualify and that two expansion teams—Orlando City SC and New York City FC—will both play in the East this year. While the Impact might have a shot of reaching the post-season, they are very far from being MLS Cup material.
But the biggest worry is still with the long-term outlook of the club. MLS is becoming stronger and more competitive every year, while the Impact, a lot of the time, still have their heads stuck in the mindset of a minor division team.
Nick Sabetti is a Montreal-based writer. Follow him on Twitter
