Joey Saputo is fast earning a reputation for being a little trigger happy. Yesterday Mauro Biello became the Quebec club’s fifth coach in four years. He has been given the title interim (again), having been the man Saputo turned to after throwing out Jesse Marsch in 2012.
Marsch had obtained a pretty creditable 42 points in 34 games in his first season, the Impact’s first in Major League Soccer. That was a better expansion season record than Vancouver and Philadelphia and on a par with Portland, the previous three expansion sides.
Yet he was not allowed to coach into their second season amid rumours he and Italian defender Alessandro Nesta did not see eye to eye.
If he was too parochial and not ‘international’ enough for Saputo’s liking, you could not level that accusation at his replacement. In stepped multi-lingual Swiss coach Marco Schällibaum who coached them into the playoffs with an even better record of 49 points from 34 games. He also won the Voyageurs Cup.
Despite that, the axe came down again in the off season and MLS veteran coach Frank Klopas came in.
Schällibaum’s main fault may have been that he started too well and expectations dimmed as the second half of the season did not match the first.
He had the team in first place in July then the Impact crumbled. In its first MLS playoff game, they finished the match with nine men after Andres Romero and star forward Marco Di Vaio were sent off. Schällibaum himself was suspended four times for a total of five games for sideline tantrums, mostly at the beginning of his tenure.
Unlike the other two, Klopas arrived with an MLS resume having coached the Chicago Fire.
His first year was a disaster, Impact finished last in MLS with just 28 points out of 34 matches, massive 18 defeats and a goal difference of minus 20. Bizarrely he survived.
That seemed like a stroke of Saputo genius when he took the side to the CONCACAF Champions League final where they fought Club America all the way.
Now they sit one point off the playoff places with FOUR games in hand over the club in sixth, Orlando. And down comes the axe again. All the sides below them have played three or four games more and the post season seemed certain.
Something doesn’t make sense. Except in Joey Saputo’s head.
