MONTREAL – 2011 was when Evan Bush’s adulthood began taking shape.
He’d gotten engaged to future wife Colleen, who he would marry after the soccer season. His career was just picking up steam. The previous season, he’d played 25 games for Crystal Palace Baltimore. Unbeknownst to him, his job and his life changed forever on August 11, 2010: Baltimore drew 0-0 at then-second division Montreal Impact. Bush stopped all 13 of Montreal’s shots on target.
“Call him Harry Potter, call him whatever you want, he really was the key player on the field.” Such were the postgame comments of Marc Dos Santos, Montreal’s head coach at the time.
On March 11, 2011, six days after his 25th birthday, Bush signed for Montreal – with a quill, presumably.
He was to be the Impact’s No. 2 ‘keeper – marquee offseason signing Bill Gaudette would be replacing the newly retired Matt Jordan, current general manager and vice-president at Houston Dynamo.
Gaudette went down injured two months into the season. Bush won the NASL Golden Glove.
On October 21, 2011, Bush made the jump to MLS expansion side Montreal Impact – one of the four players from that NASL Montreal team to make the first MLS roster.
But it was back to square one.
Bush wasn’t an MLS-proven goalkeeper. After trials at D.C. United and Seattle Sounders FC, in 2009, he’d joined hometown club Cleveland City Stars for one USSF-D2 season. Still, Bush was expecting more from that season in Montreal: he settled for third in the pecking order, behind Donovan Ricketts and Greg Sutton.
Bush made his MLS debut on June 30, 2012, in a 3-0 defeat at D.C. United. A month later, he was Montreal’s man of the match in a penalty-kick loss to French giants Olympique Lyonnais. Greg Sutton retired at the end of 2012, securing a deserved promotion to the No. 2 spot for Bush. He backed Troy Perkins, who’d landed in Montreal from Portland midway through the 2012 season in exchange of Ricketts.
He then worked his way up again, to the No. 1 job, late in 2014 when last-placed Montreal already looked ahead to the next season. Perkins’ departure in the offseason opened the door for Bush to switch from jersey No. 30 to No. 1 in 2015, a sign that he’d finally arrived.
“I was reading an article about the Red Bulls and about how they have this chip on their shoulder,” Bush tells MLSsoccer.com in between two bites of fruit before an Impact training session. “I think back to the first year that Jesse [Marsch] was here, and when I signed with the team, they put me as the third goalkeeper. I saw the chip on my shoulder because of that. And I respect Jesse. I think he’s done a great job. But I can thank him a bit for putting that chip on my shoulder.”
The journey to today has proved tough, but Bush can see the silver lining. Not playing regularly allows you to reflect on your livelihood, on your game, on your position.
Admittedly, Bush just got tossed in there when needed, years after he’d started playing – as a striker or midfielder, never in the backline. Using his hands came naturally: he became All-State in basketball before he did in soccer.
“Eye-hand coordination, athleticism, shiftiness, quickness, explosiveness,” Bush says of basketball’s contribution to his soccer career. “The only thing that basketball had a negative effect on was maybe my recruiting out of high school. I ended up going to a great college soccer program anyway [the University of Akron Zips], but that was the only Division I soccer program that took notice of me. In the winter is when all the showcase tournaments go on for the high school kids, and I was playing basketball, so I missed out on all those with my club team.”
Years later, the former two-guard – “or a three, somewhere between there,” Bush says – picked up the Golden Glove award for Best Goalkeeper in the 2014-15 CONCACAF Champions League.
That award filled Youssef Dahha, the likable and skilled Montreal Impact goalkeeper coach, with pride. Dahha and ‘Bushie’ enjoy a rewarding working relationship based on mutual respect. They certainly don’t agree on everything. Different “cultural ideas” about how the position should be played, Bush says, lead to healthy debates – Belgium-born Dahha is of Moroccan heritage.
The discussions, the reflection, the intellectualizing of the position deriving from its uniqueness in team sports are part of the appeal, according to Bush.
“The smallest details are very important,” Bush says. “You can really get into those details. You ask my wife, and she’ll say that I’ve got a little bit of OCD, things like that, even certain things like organization around the house. Maybe it’s a little bit of that coming out of me.”
It’s no surprise that Bush contemplates a coaching career when all is said and done. Not only is he a student of the game, but he’s gained a wealth of relevant experience; though he hasn’t seen many different locker rooms, he’s worked under six coaches in five years (Dos Santos, Nick De Santis, Marsch, Marco Schällibaum, Frank Klopas and Mauro Biello). He can tell what works and what doesn’t.
At 29, Bush is the longest-serving Montreal Impact player, along with Hassoun Camara. His evolution, in a way, followed the team’s. Where Montreal started out their MLS existence with a goalkeeper renowned for his exploits on his line and defenders more comfortable shifting play forward quickly, Bush strived to become more competent with the ball at his feet.
“The ability to play with your feet, now, is integral to what you do as a team, not only coming off your line but building out of the back,” Bush says. “When fans see, in this league, the guys making the big saves, see a guy like Ricketts make a save, sprawling to the top corner, guys that aren’t necessarily great with their feet but making huge saves, they don’t understand that the team’s at a deficit because they can’t play out of the back. They can’t play with their feet. Looking around the league, that’s one of the biggest improvements I think I’ve made in the four or five years that I’ve been here.”
It also helps that Montreal now have “a monster up top,” as Bush calls Didier Drogba, to play off of. His aerial prowess has given Bush more options, increasing the possibilities that even a sub-par ball can be retained.
Drogba’s influence has pushed Montreal into the Audi 2015 MLS Cup Playoffs – with Bush as the main man between the posts. The path to here was peppered with some mishaps. A home defeat to New York City FC comes to mind. But Bush has also pulled off some out of this world, wizardly saves.
This Sunday, Montreal play their Eastern Conference Semifinal second leg against the Columbus Crew. A return to Ohio. It is still home – a two and a half hour drive from it, anyway. Bush speaks of his pride for the Cleveland area, where there’s “no bull** with people.”
But overthinking this homecoming has been detrimental. Bush has defended Montreal’s net three times in Columbus. His only win came earlier this season, when he removed himself from the emotional tie-in to the area.
“In order to have a good game and enjoy the moments after the game with my family, you have to make it just like any other game,” Bush says. “I think my family and friends understand that now. I don’t think that, this time, I’m going to try to sort out any tickets or anything. I’ll say, ‘You’re all on your own.’ Regular-season games are one thing. I’ll help them out. But with playoff games, thinking that there’ll probably be a limit on tickets anyways, I don’t want to do all that hassle and have other things to think about other than the actual game.”
Both of Colleen and Evan Bush’s families still live in Ohio, away from their grandkids. The couple twice became parents in Montreal – chatty Isabella is two, fussy Canaan is ten weeks old. They will likely move back to the States after Evan is done playing, for proximity.
But Bush will always feel a special love for the city he currently lives in. This is where he found progress and prosperity.
