The Impact are 4-10-0 this season, and so far it doesn’t seem they are good enough to turn it around.
Ever since the Montreal Impact entered Major League Soccer in 2012, it’s been an up and down journey for them. In the 6 years they’ve been in the league, they’ve had five coaching changes, including newly appointed French coach Remi Garde, made the playoffs three out of six seasons, acquired big name players like Marco Di Vaio, Alessandro Nesta, Didier Drogba and Ignacio Piatti, their franchise leading scorer. All of this put into account, and it has resulted with zero championships added to the organization.
Of course, just like any expansion team entering a new league, there would be a deal of pain before gain, and former Impact coach Jesse Marsch, experienced that the hard way. In their first MLS season, playing 36 games under Marsch, they had twelve wins, seventeen losses and seven ties, which did not qualify them for the playoffs evidently. After one season, he was let go as coach of the Impact and the team decided to go in a new direction. After a couple of months of searching for a new coach, they finally found their man in Marco Schallibaum.
In one season, he recorded seventeen wins, seventeen losses and nine ties as coach of the Impact, which was okay for a first season, but problems within the team like players not seeing eye to eye with Schallibaum led to his departure and thus restarting the search for a coach.
Frank Klopas was a known commodity in the MLS, and Impact owner Joey Saputo thought he was the guy to turn things around, and boy did he ever. Although they did not qualify for the playoffs in his first season as coach in 2014, they made a historic run in the CONCACAF Championship tournament, and the Impact started to gain publicity and more people started watching them and attending their games. That year was spectacular, with the Impact playing in the CONCACAF Final against Mexican powerhouse Club America. Sold out Olympic Stadium with 60,000 people on hand to witness history in the making for a team that is finally reaching its full potential. In the end, they lost 4-1, but it was a huge turning point for the team and the franchise as a whole. All together, Klopas had a good run as a coach, but it all came to an end after a terrible start to the 2015 season, leading to his firing and assistant coach Mauro Biello taking over in the interim.
After the 2015 season, where the Impact lost in the Conference Semi-Final to the Columbus Crew, they signed Mauro Biello to be the new coach. His first season as head coach, he led the the Impact to the Conference Final in 2016, but lost to Canadian rival Toronto FC. Biello was a long time Impact player, and of the best players in team history. 93 games coaching the Impact, he led them to a 36-34-23 record, which resulted in 2 playoff appearances during his tenure, and taking the team far into the playoffs before being eliminated.
The beginning of the 2017 season, the Impact struggled to find the identity that they had two years ago. As the season went on, it started to become a continuing trend, and it quickly brought them to being one of the worst teams in the Eastern Conference. After not making the playoffs for the third time in six years, Biello was relieved of his duties and Joey Saputo said began his search for a coach with a winning background. Many interviews were conducted, but Saputo elected to go with the winning background of Remi Garde, current coach of the Montreal Impact.
Garde arrived with a nice resume, having played as a defensive midfielder throughout his career, playing with Lyon in France, Strasbourg in Germany and Arsenal in England. He retired after 12 seasons of playing, and got into coaching post-retirement. He was hired by Lyon in 2003, and led them to back-to-back championships in 2004 and 2005. He then led them to the Coupe De France in 2012 and also won the Trophy of Champions in the same year. After 8 years at Lyon, he left for family reasons. After a year off, he was then hired by Aston Villa, but lasted only a season after confrontations with management and players.
Now with Garde coaching the Impact, he’s looking to make statement in his first season, but so far, it has not come to what he expected. He brought in a plethora of players to help make the team better, but sacrificed one of the most beloved players on the Impact: Laurent Ciman, whom Garde traded to expansion team Los Angeles FC in exchange for Raheem Edwards and Jukka Raitala. It was the first trade he made, and fans did not like it at all. Garde’s intention was to retool this team, and bring in players he knew would make a contribution right away. He brought in Zakaria Diallo, Rudy Camacho, Alejandro Silva, Saphir Taider, Jeisson Vargas. Some of them have made an impact, and some not so much, and it’s really starting to show that the team lacks a true identity. Right now, they are 4-10-0, with their recent match being a win against the Houston Dynamo, and their first win since beating Toronto FC at home 1-0 all the way back in April.
So far it’s been a difficult road for Garde and the Impact, but they are up for the challenge and expect a tough season ahead, while maintaining that sense that it will only get better from here on out… hopefully that is.
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