Getting Reacquainted with Club du Foot Montreal, Canada's "Other" Flash in the Pan

Actual search result for "flash in the pan"

Thumbnail History
One thing the entire "Getting Reacquainted with" project has surfaced is how few trophies Major League Soccer’s Canadian teams have contributed to the collective trophy case. While that makes sense when it comes to the Vancouver Whitecaps, who has battled gravity for as long as they’ve been a team, 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….huh, 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 MLS favorites, Argentine winger/forward, Ignacio Piatti. Piatti had the misfortune of showing up in time to go through the Wooden Spoon paddle-wheel, but the arrival of Ciman and smart additions like midfield mind-fucker 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 famous 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 in the return leg. 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 hear, at least not one that isn’t a thud of failure. Here's to a season and a half at the top, huzzah, or rather, allons-y.

Total Joy Points: 2

Montreal, Philadelphia, Pontius, Piatti (Tinker, Tailor...)

Y'know, I'm seeing the likeness now.

[Montreal Impact v. Philadelphia Union was one of three games I took in this weekend. If I'm watching 'em, shouldn't I be writing about them? Otherwise, why was I watching it?]

Hey, let's throw another log on the raging bonfire of Everything I've Gotten Wrong. Last week (was it last week? nope; there it is), I dubbed the Philadelphia Union the team to beat in the Eastern Conference. This past Saturday, the Montreal Impact kicked one leg after another out from under the platform. Then they kicked Philly's prostrate body one more time for good measure.

Jesus, was that a brutal loss. By the end of the 5-1 rout, the Impact was toying with the Union. (Albeit with a few liters less piss-and-vinegar than Sacha Kljestan poured on New York City FC in another of this weekend's routs). It wasn't all terrible news for Philly – Keegan Rosenberry showed flashes of one-on-one defending brilliance and Josh Yaro stepped up sharply and smartly as you like a couple times; both good signs – but one key problem stood out from the Union's point of view: they simply could not keep Montreal's attackers in front of them. The Impact went vertical at will (am I using that word right? I know I didn't coin it, so, relevant), by which I mean they repeatedly found ways to run straight at the Union's defenders and to send them reeling toward their own goal.

MLS Week 23 Review: GOTW, SOTW, ROTW, Plus A Lot of Comparisons

A moment most MLS fans have had to contemplate.

Well, the good news is, I finally wrestled one these weekly reviews to under three pages. Huzzah! And...that's the preamble: let's get to Major League Soccer's Week 23.

Week 23 could be called the Week of the Inflated Result, with several teams (see: Columbus Crew SC v. Colorado Rapids; or, Sporting Kansas City v. Toronto FC; or Los Angeles Galaxy v. Seattle Sounders FC). posting scorelines that looked bigger on paper than they did on the field. It could also be called the Week of the Outside of the Boot Goal (examples  #1 and #2). More than anything else, though, Week 23 brought with it some sign of separation among clubs, with the clearest example coming with what the Vancouver Whitecaps did to a Real Salt Lake side that tried to sneak a B-team onto the pitch (see: methodical pounding), which worked about as well as trying to put out a fire with a paper towel.

My personal highlights of the week included a mom in Colorado doing the “earmuffs” with her kid in the hope of saving him from what I assume was the "you suck, asshole" chant. It's that or Felipe's trouser blowout against New York City FC. Video for both moments was, by definition, hard to find. Actually, the video department is totally slouching this past weekend. Maybe they’re losing interest…so, watch those mini-games, yeah?

All in all, I believe that very little happens week to week in MLS. I wish I could frame all this better than, “so, a bunch of stuff happened, and here’s some of it.” I don’t, though, so what comes below are just a collection of notes that came to me as I watched all the mini-games during MLS Week 23... and the following three games in full (and, yes, the Conifers & Citrus Interest Rankings have been updated!):

Portland Timbers v. Chicago Fire (full, grumpy write-up here)
Colorado Rapids v. Columbus Crew SC (brief, barely worth reading write-up)
Los Angeles Galaxy v. Seattle Sounders FC (write-up)

Uh, last thing: I'm replacing the ol’ beer-'n’-shots motif with a straight-up Top 10 thoughts for the week. Actually, I’m just moving “the shot” (e.g. the big, heavy-hitting idea) to a separate post…look, it’s a work in progress, all of it. At any rate, join me on a tour of MLS Week 23, starting with The Honors!

MLS Week 22 Review: The Bonus Multiplier Player, Result of the Week and MORE!!

Yes, going crazy from the heat...

In order to make this latest weekly update of Major League Soccer (Week 22) at least somewhat about the week just passed, I have to tinker with the organization. Otherwise, it's mostly about random observations that, 1) came to me as I watched the games and mini-games, and 2) involve trends and comments on this player or that, i.e. basic concepts with no immediate bearing on time or place. With that in mind, the one beer* specifically relevant to Week 22 will come before the shot (again, see asterisk), and the five other, perhaps seasonal beers, perhaps not, will follow.

(* These posts are built around the concept of a shot – e.g. a long-ish, lightly-researched anchoring feature – and a six-pack of beers – e.g. shorter, brief, likely not researched, yet hopefully well-argued thoughts).

One other piece of housekeeping: the Conifers & Citrus Interest Rankings (see right sidebar) are current. (And, for the curious, I explained what those rankings are and why I see them as useful last week.)

All right, enough with the preamble. How about that Week 22? That record-breaking Week 22, which featured goals, goals, goals (X 36, or thereabouts). For something wild (in the David Lee Roth sense of the word), a couple of the games reinforced (see: Columbus Crew SC), or reinforced (see: Seattle Sounders FC) actual trends. All things I may or may not talk about. Haven't decided yet, honestly. All I know is that I've got my notes and intend to go where the spirit directs me.

1) The...Things of the Week!
Goal of the Week: Taylor Kemp's slicing, one-time bomb against Real Salt Lake. I just like Kemp.
Save of the Week: I never saw anything better than Luis Robles' save against Conor Casey.
Result of the Week: Though tempted to go with Columbus' just straight-up collapse against Orlando City SC (more later) or the way the Seattle Sounders' loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps took an existing trend in a bad direction, but, for me, DC United's flat-out nuts, meme-breaking win over Real Salt Lake yelled louder for attention than the rest. And that yelling came in a couple languages, too. Now, obviously, it put DC back on top in both the Eastern Conference and in the Supporters' Shield race, but that's just the beginning. East beat West, and that's something even if RSL hardly stands as the West's best. The fact they came back into the game highlights a telling trend for DC this season, one brought up during the game: DC United boasts a 4-3-1 record in games where they're trailing at the half; this comeback made that 5-3-1; even with 24 games played, that's pretty badass. The deeper (deepest?) point has been framed a little strangely in the few places I've come across it. DC has earned a well-won reputation as the dourest of grinders: literally, one exception aside, DC's 22 prior games were low-scoring, one-goal-margin affairs. A couple comments – possibly throw-aways, given that they came during podcast – hinted that the last two, high-scoring comeback wins represent some kind of break with that reality/approach. Is it true? Dunno. Moreover, a genuine shift could mean all kinds of things, just as much as it would if the past two games prove to be anomalies. All I know is, that’s why we watch.

Now, get the salt and chop up a lime. SHOT!