Montreal Impact reveals MLS jersey for 2012

After a long wait we finally have our MLS kit for next season and therefore our jerseys, home and away.



When most of us expected a replica of Inter de Milan, black and blue vertical stripes, what the team presented Thursday night was the continuation of last season jersey with certain very particular details.


Details

2011 (2nd division) NASL jersey

One might see a different shade of blue on the new one when compared with 2011 jersey, also the white details are set differently. The added details are the new logo, new sponsor (BMO), different make (Adidas), MLS logo on the right sleeve, canadian flag on the left sleeve, different white details on the sides, two silver lines representing the rivers around the island of Montreal and the most special part, the Mont Royal cross made out of embossed fleur de lis in the front. 

MLS 2012 jersey

MLS 2012 Secondary jersey

Closer look to the
embossed fleur de lis.

The cross in the front is what really stands out from this new design and is what makes this shirt special 

I am not the most thrilled person on the planet with the new design, honestly I expected more black on the uniform and even a mixture with the stripes as per the logo and the scarf presented months a go. But when you analyse uniforms in the MLS we are the only ones using royal blue and white, specially when Sporting Kansas City  moved to pale blue last year with the re-branding. Only New England use blue shirt as a first option but not the same shade, being this darker and mixed with grey. 

The sponsor

Toronto FC shirt

Celtic (green and white) and Rangers (blue). Big rivals in Scotland. 

BMO (Bank of Montreal) as a sponsor is another issue for me. Being Toronto our closer true rival is not ideal  for Montreal to also have it on the shirt. In this case is only money what matters so I guess Joey Saputo found the most lucrative one. Being this the best for the club I have nothing else to add on this matter. 

Also when you see much bigger rivalries like Rangers and Celtic in Scotland or Boca Juniors and River Plate in Argentina also sharing sponsor on the shirt you realize there are more important issues in football to worry about. 

Boca Juniors jersey

River Plate jersey.

Video for the reveal. 

For more on the night of the jersey reveal you can watch the video.

What do you think about the new MLS kit?

MLS and the playoffs structure

MLS has always been a controversial league, a football league built differently and therefore target of polemic opinions. People still remember it as the one with countdown clock and games decided in
shootouts instead of penalty kicks. Nowadays, after several changes in the league operations, it is still criticised for the salary cap on the teams, player ownership by the league, no promotion / relegation,
non-aligned FIFA calendar and Playoffs format to decided the champion. 

The way professional sports are designed in North America has made the people to give little importance to regular season performance and all the importance to the playoff elimination style at the end of the
season. This is where the MLS cup playoffs are criticised when compared with Europe, where the team with most points earned all year long wins the league.

The most recent Playoff format was designed to give the Supporter's Shield winner home field advantage in every series to make its way easy to the MLS cup final compared with the last seed qualified so the
league. As an example you can see how it turned out for LA Galaxy so far, beating the Red Bulls with the 2nd leg and decisive game at home and beating the single elimination match up against Real Salt Lake at
home too to advance to the MLS Cup Final.

Another addition to the new format is the wild card playoff game which gathers the last 4 qualified teams (of the 10 playoff teams in total) to play single elimination game and make their way to the conference semifinals. So the 7th team receive at home the 10th team and the 8th team receive at home the 9th team. This has been
also created polemic conversations around how the league is encouraging mediocre performances throughout the season awarding so many playoffs spots.

In my opinion playoffs are an exciting way to end a long season. Playing elimination match-ups leads teams and players to rise their competition level generating more memorable  sports moments. I’ve been
following Italian and Spanish leagues since I was 10 years old and very few seasons have had exciting endings and when that happens it depend on other’s team performance to win the league. One of the most
exciting league endings was the 2006-2007 La Liga last match day of the season where  Barcelona had to beat Gimnastic and wait if Real Madrid tied or lost its game against Mallorca to win the league, and
again, it was exciting but in  this situation teams like Mallorca or Gimanstic has nothing to win or lose and there is when corruption plays an important role, specially when a powerful and wealthy team
like Barcelona, Real Madrid, Juventus or AC Milan are involved. When you have playoffs you avoid many of this situations and competition is more direct.

About the wild card games I also think are the right way to go on this league, I totally bought Commissioner Don’s Garber idea when he explained that the fan base needs to be created in order to grow the sports popularity in North America. It is exciting for fans to have playoffs expectations at the end of the season and the
opposite of this is the Major League Baseball where 8 teams out of 30 reach the playoffs and you can see a team in July knowing they have no chance to participate in October’s playoffs. It is the case of the
Toronto Blue Jays since they are in ultra competitive American League East division (Yankees and Red Sox) they have almost 2 decades without a playoff game and therefore a hard way to maintain their fan base
motivated. Whereas In leagues like NBA and NHL, 53% (16 out of 30) of the teams reach a playoff spot. The ratio in MLS is 55% (10/18), as explained, I really don’t have any problem with it.

The only problem I really see with the MLS Cup Playoffs current structure is the fact it is divided by conferences (east and west) but the calendar is balanced so you play 2 games with each team. In my
opinion is either one or the other, but you can’t have a balanced schedule and have playoffs fixture divided by conferences making unfair matchups like Seattle (2nd best record overall) vs Real Salt Lake (3rd best record overall) eliminating themselves in early rounds and Sporting Kansas City (5th best record overall but first in the
east) treated like 2nd best team in the league arriving easily to the eastern conference finals. This makes absolutely no sense to me and has to change soon. Last update from Don Garber last week announced the calendar will be unbalanced and therefore conferences will make more sense. 

Montreal vs Puerto Rico, today at 2:30pm.

The Impact starts today its first of five games in Saputo Stadium, Montreal.

There are only 11 games left in the NASL regular season and Montreal is last in the standings and 9 points behind the last playoff qualification seed, Fort Lauderdale Strikers.

It's an uphill road from now on and we have our last chance to build up a positive momentum with this 5 games at home. The recent inclusions, Ryan Pore and Cameron Knowles to the roster reveals the management's commitment on this current situation.

Pore (#32), 4 years of MLS experience with Kansas City, 2010 Most Valuable Player in second division and 2009 golden boot, is on loan from Portland Timbers until the end of the season and can be the type of player that can boost the attack for this last half of the season. I personally remember him being remarkable good while playing against Montreal and have lots of expectations on his debut today.

Today Puerto Rico visits Saputo Stadium in 2nd place on the standings with 29 points Montreal has 12pts only) and as current champions will be a tough opponent.

Game will be on TV on the waves of Radio Canada and will be a nice chance to boost the soccer passion in a beautiful summer Sunday on Montreal while preparing our debut in MLS next year.

See you guys there!

Here are the pre-game comments.

Carolina 2 - Impact 0 ; Lets rest for a week and meditate.

source: montrealimpact.com

Contrary to previous games, Impact tried it Sunday night. I know football is not a sport where statistics are relevant, and that's the beauty of it, but in a game where you outplay the opponent 14 shots to 10, 5 corners to 2  is a little unfair to say the team is a total disaster. And even loosing 2-0 the team held the pressure being caught off-side only once and looked for the goal professionally showing and impressive fair play with 2 fouls committed in all game, that is remarkable.


Important fact is Eduardo Sebrango, a 38 years old retired forward, came back to help the injured roster this week and created most of the attacking in 2nd half. As I said in previous postings, this team needs to find a source of motivation whether it be academy player Mircea Ilcu or retired forward Sebrango.

Give the team a couple of games to adapt this new era without Dos Santos, we are half way through this season and players know is not a matter of MLS or not, is a matter of pride and to keep their value in the market, because Impact wont be keeping most of this group at this pace.

Next game on Wednesday July 13, 2011 - Saputo Stadium - 7:30pm.
See you guys there.

Impact 0 - Puerto Rico 0. You can't build a team in one day.

After two consecutive days of headlines about the Impact (not easy) we sadly ended accepting the departure of a very nice guy, Marc Dos Santos, who I met personally last week. It was an honest move after a very long streak of bad results. Apparently leading an heterogeneous group like the Impact was harder than he thought. Now is Nick's job to get the group together, yes the same players he chose four months a go.

Evan Bush - montrealimpact.com

Nick Des Santis, temporary coach, only had one day to get familiar with the team and the system before facing the current 2nd division champions, Puerto Rico Islanders.We cannot blame him, you really cannot do much in one day and what we saw Wednesday night was a team with the same old problems, so I would wait at least 2 more games before start judging.

We did have good news, in the attendance, which reached more than 10,000 seats (more than 80%). Not bad at all for a Wednesday night in a regular season match even considering kids are on vacations since last week.

On the pitch, it was Hassoun Camara who came to my attention all game long. It is a waste to use him as central back, he needs more freedom in the midfield and I would love to see him playing at least once with David Testo as double pivots. So the good news would be to see Pizzolitto back and moving Camara to midfield, but What to do with Amir Lowery? Good question. Well that is Nick's job and not mine, for the moment.

Next game will be at Cary, North Carolina when facing the Railhawks Sunday at 7pm.