The Montreal Impact’s second season in MLS can be summed up with a simple analogy, it was a roller coaster. The first half of the season the team performed well (9W 4L 4T) and everything was rosy and looking up. The team was to finish tops in the Eastern Conference. Then during the second half of the season, everything came crashing down (5W 9L 3T) with a backdoor playoff knockout round appearance and humiliating loss to Houston.
Not surprisingly, during the team’s year end press conference, President Joey Saputo and Sporting Director Nick De Santis gave no indication on the future of coach Marco Schällibaum. They said they would need more time to evaluate and understand what happened before confirming whether they would want the coach to return. This is just a smoke screen. You do not wait till the end of the season to find out what is going wrong with your team. You evaluate on a daily basis, and then you can make a decision just a few days after the season has ended. This “reflection time” is just an attempt for the Impact to buy some time to come up with a Plan B.
The smart thing to do is take a page of last year’s firing of Jesse Marsch, and announce that a decision has been made to have an amicable parting of ways. Perhaps coach Schällibaum can state he wanted to remain in Switzerland to spend more time with his family, and the Impact can say they want a fresh start given how badly the season ended. Speculation will only increase in the coming weeks, and the more time goes by, the worse it will get.
I believe the Impact should find a new coach, and hope they are searching for one at the moment. The second half collapse was unacceptable and is much worse than what Jesse Marsch did in his first year with an expansion team roster. The coach’s bad temper is well documented, as is his stubbornness with the management of the roster (not doing a proper rotation of players) and his inability to manage two competitions simultaneously (MLS regular season and Concacaf Champions League). It is my view that despite injuries and the team only being in their second season in MLS, the bulk of the blame goes on the coach. Given the constraints of the salary cap, I believe Nick De Santis provided the coach with a competitive roster and this collapse could have been avoided. The depth of the team is weak but in my opinion it is not the primary problem. The most important opinion should be from the players, and I believe Marco Di Vaio's indifference towards the coach and the year end press conference was most telling. He gave me the impression that it would not be a big deal if the coach would return or not. This will definitely be taken into consideration by the Impact brass, what the opinion is of their best player.
The day after the press conference, coach Schällibaum reiterated his desire to return and did acknowledge he had a role to play in the team’s horrendous second half season performance. He has some leverage given his contract is guaranteed as the team made the playoffs. However Joey Saputo did state he had no issue with paying the coach and respecting his contract if he felt it was in the best interests of the team.
I believe this reflection time does not bode well for the coach. If I had a say in the decision (to keep the coach or let him go) I would have suggested the following: if you want to keep him, it should have been confirmed right away at the year end presser. You announce to the team, players and fans that you are 100% behind your coach and want him to continue his work for the next season.
I see no positives coming out of this period of uncertainty, where weeks go by and things remain in limbo. If the Impact decide to retain the coach’s services for next season, there will always be a dark cloud hanging in the background. I do not like the message that is sent by doing this. As proof of the potential of this causing more harm than good, we can look at AC Milan who went through a similar experience with their coach Massimiliano Allegri. There were months of speculation that the coach would be replaced despite having a contract. They decided to stick with Allegri and now Milan is having a terrible start to the Serie A season, in fact it’s one of the worst starts in their history.
Training camp is only two months away, and I believe IMFC will want to participate once again in the Walt Disney World ® Pro Classic Soccer Tournament in Orlando, Florida which debuts Feb. 19, 2014. There have been no confirmations of the participating teams as of yet.
Time is coach Schällibaum’s friend, the more time goes by, the more difficult it will be for the Impact to want to replace him. Tick tock ….