SoccerImpact winning hearts in hockey country

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Yes, you read that correctly. 55,571 fans turned up to watch the Impact battle Santos. And if you could ask each and every one of those people whether they enjoyed the game, you could probably count on one hand the number who didn’t.

I have to admit, though, that I wasn't in the best of moods heading into Montreal.

Staggering ignorance

For starters, my flight was delayed. I've spent far too much of my life in airports and on buses traveling to and from games to want to spend any more unnecessary time in an airport lounge.

To make matters worse, while I was waiting for my flight to depart I decided to take a look through some of our national newspapers. Not one of them had so much as a paragraph about the upcoming game. Not even a sentence for a game that was projected to attract one of the single biggest live audiences of any sport anywhere in the country this year. At times, the ignorance of the media in this country to the game of soccer is staggering.

I was also a little bit apprehensive about what the demographics of such a large audience would be. Would there be more Mexican supporters inside the Big O than Montreal Impact supporters? Would they out-number and out-sing the hometown fans, as has been known to happen before? Would this be another black eye for the game of soccer that the mass media would use to say, "Told you so."

Well, I needn't have worried.

The Impact's first foray into the Santos penalty area was greeted with a groundswell of enthusiasm. The volume inside the stadium went up a level every time Montreal came forward. It was very clear from the outset that this was a pro-Montreal crowd, and if there was any doubt about that, it was erased at the five-minute mark when Montreal opened the scoring.

Initially credited to Eddie Sebrango, the goal that raised the roof was actually kicked into the Santos goal by one of their own defenders. Who actually scored it was irrelevant, because the only thing that mattered was that the Impact had the lead. That they went on to double that lead is a testament to how well they performed individually and as a group.

No underdogs

I'm not going to insult Montreal by calling them underdogs. And I'm not going to refer to their quest for success as a Cinderella story. Because it isn't.

They are a very good team. They play great football, the way it is meant to be played, by passing the ball and moving to support each other. They defend as a team and attack as a single unit.

You don't have to be an Impact supporter to appreciate good football, and I'm sure that there were more than a few Toronto FC and Vancouver Whitecaps fans secretly willing the Impact on to victory in the final stages of the game.

Coach John Limniatis, ever the pragmatist, cautioned that this was only the halfway stage of this series. He is, of course, entirely correct, and the Impact will be in for a very difficult game in the return leg down in Mexico on March 5.

He even went as far as to distance himself from the comments of his midfield maestro, stating that while he wanted Canada to be considered a soccer nation, we're not there yet.

But judging by the turnout last night, Canada might not be as far away from that as he thinks.

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