 |
| Sometimes the produce isn't so good. |
The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...
Thumbnail History
One thing the entire "[Level Set]" project has surfaced is how few trophies Major League Soccer’s Canadian teams have collected over the years. While that makes sense when it comes to the Vancouver Whitecaps, who has battled gravity for as long as they’ve been a team (wait for it; one of stories of 2025), it takes looking past Toronto’s FC’s (one-off) all-conquering 2017 team and, to the case in point, the Montreal Impact team of the mid-2010s. As laid out in their list of mighty works below, Club du Foot Montreal’s best era amounted to two fleeting seasons, but it was a freakin’ party for as long as it lasted.
The Montreal Impact, known as Club du Foot Montreal since 2021, graduated from the USL to MLS in 2012 and, judging by their Year One signings, they came in determined to make a splash. While their inaugural roster contained the usual smattering of MLS journeymen (e.g., Collen Warner, Davy Arnaud and….Zarek Valentin), and hyped-up youngsters (e.g., Andrew Wenger), Montreal did some heavy shopping in Italy, signing CBs Alessandro Nesta and Matteo Ferrari and slick and saucy little forward, Marco Di Viao. All that investment not only failed to translate to Quebecois, it went two tits up in 2014, their only season to end with the shameful sting of the Wooden Spoon. After the failure of the Italian experiment, Montreal started sniffing around other leagues for talent and that search brought in two of their all-time great talents, the Belgian defender/midfielder Laurent Ciman and, one of my all-time personal favorites, Argentine winger/forward, Ignacio Piatti. Piatti had the misfortune of showing up in time to go through Montreal's one and only crawl through the Wooden Spoon paddle-wheel, but the arrival of Ciman and smart additions like midfield wrecker Marco Donadel the experienced Nigel Reo-Coker made turned the team’s fortunes on a literal dime. A mere five and half months after the worst regular season of 2014, the Impact went the distance in the 2015 CONCACAF Champions’ League, contesting the two-leg final against Mexico’s Club America. In a pattern familiar to any MLS fan from that period, Montreal carried a promising result out of Mexico City (1-1!), only to collapse under the weight of a second half onslaught front of their home fans. Those 135 minutes’ worth of dreaming certainly felt incredible and, with that breeze blowing at their backs, Montreal became the talk of MLS when they hit the high-profile player motherlode by signing Chelsea/Ivory Coast legend Didier Drogba in late 2015. With the core intact and Drogba throwing around his weight and talent up top, even if not for every game (dude was old by then), L’Impact put together their best-ever MLS season in 2016…and, just as quickly as they came, the good times ended. Montreal would bubble up into the fringes of real competition in the seasons that followed, but, more often than not, they fail to make a noise loud enough for anyone to notice, at least not one that isn’t a thud of failure. A season and a half at the top, huzzah, or rather, allons-y.
2025, Briefly
Worse than usual, thanks for asking! Montreal’s regular season started with more road games than usual (just confirmed). They got one point out of their first home stand in mid-April (v. CLT, v ORL), then picked up their first win of 2025…on the road at New York City FC. Home games didn’t help, obviously, not with a thin six wins over the entire 2025 regular season. Montreal sucked in 2025 and, not to put too fine a point on it, the only thing between them and a second beating from a Nantucket great aunt (e.g., Wooden Spoon) was the flaming incompetence of one team that burns money (Atlanta) and another that burns brains cells whilst pinches pennies (DC). I wax on about bigger picture because Montreal didn’t give anyone much to work with in 2025. Prince Owusu played a sturdy season, and the man does good things up top, but he still posted second forward numbers on a team that handed him a high five and a subway sandwich in terms of support. They “poached” Giacomo Vrioni from New England for reasons I don’t think anyone tracked and after that it’s…with respect, I challenge any and all non-Montreal fans to name their top five players for minutes played last season. Bonus points to the person who guesses within 250 minutes of the actual minutes played by Montreal’s fifth most reliably-present player.
Montreal has been remarkably anonymous for several seasons now. It’s kinda depressing…
 |
| Run faster. |
A dynamite 2022 attacking season aside (fun fact, Montreal had Romell Quioto, Djordje Mihalovic and Kei Kamara that season), Montreal has a history of under-performing on the attacking side with a lot of slipping to the wrong side of average on defense. That trend has continued and worsened over Montreal’s past three seasons, something one has to think…concerns Montreal fans. They scored a scintillating one goal per game over the 2025 season – 2022 aside, Montreal has struggled with scoring since 2016 – something that would make the offense look like a problem were the defense not equally bad. Montreal has been a bad team for a decade, and just a smidge worse in MLS regular season play over that time.
Players I Still Like/Additions So Far
To the extent Montreal has a star player, it’s Owusu. They had Dante Sealy – who posted decent second-attacker numbers – but he just got swiped by the (ever-scavenging) Colorado Rapids. This team needs to make some impactful additions between today and, say, the first transfer window (whenever that is), if just to avoid another season of playing the Washington Generals to half the league. I see players I respect on that roster – Bryce Duke’s not so bad and Fabian Herbers will give both legs to give a better team five more points – but I don’t see how anybody gives Montreal’s a snowball’s chance of competing in 2026 without upgrades over half the roster. In fairness, they aren’t a team I watch much, but a regular season record speaks louder than the eye test.
Historical Success (/Hysterical Failure)
Total Joy Points: 2
How They Earned Them (& How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
MLS Semifinals: 2016
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 2015, 2022
Wooden Spoon: 2014
CCL Runner-Up: 2015
CCL Quarterfinals: 2020, 2022
Canadian Championships: 2013, 2014, 2019, 2021 (fwiw, that FC Forge team is tough.)
No comments:
Post a Comment