Montreal Impact see positives despite 4 2 CONCACAF Champions League loss
By Kelsey Patterson
THE CANADIAN PRESS
MONTREAL _ Despite crashing out of the CONCACAF Champions League, the Montreal Impact are holding their heads up high.
The Impact were one victory away from winning the biggest soccer tournament in North America, but they were thumped 4-2 by Mexico’s Club America in the second leg of the final at the Olympic Stadium on Wednesday.
Even with the result _ a 5-3 loss on aggregate _ the Impact coaching staff were happy with what the team accomplished.
“Of course we wanted to win it, but we should be proud,” said the Impact’s director of international business development Nick De Santis. “The players should be proud and the city should be proud because we showed that we can compete against the best.”
De Santis, a member of the Montreal Impact organization for nearly two decades, has seen first-hand how far the team has come. De Santis played midfield for the Montreal Supra of the Canadian Soccer League in the late 1980s before playing two stints with the Impact between 1993 and 2003. At the time, the club played its soccer at Centre Claude-Robillard, a small outdoor field.
“Playing sometimes in front of 500 to 1,000 people, now playing
in front of 61,000b