Do you remember where you were on May 7, 2016?
That night, the Impact was losing 4-1 at Columbus, 53 minutes in, and seemed destined for a heavy defeat. And yet, at the final whistle, the Bleu-blanc-noir had just overcome a three-goal deficit to clinch a draw.
This is a familiar story to Montreal supporters. Last Saturday, the Impact was losing 3-0 at Philadelphia, 39 minutes in, and seemed destined for a heavy defeat. And yet, at the final whistle, the Bleu-blanc-noir had just overcome a three-goal deficit to clinch a draw.
The Impact has managed this achievement twice in the last two seasons – both times on the road. Even more impressively, the 2017 edition of the Bleu-blanc-noir was only the ninth team to erase a three-goal deficit and draw a game – and only the sixth to do so on the road. And while the Impact players admit that they ideally shouldn’t find themselves in such situations to begin with, they all stressed the need for specific attributes to achieve this.
“It shows a lot of character,” said goalkeeper Evan Bush. “I’m super happy about how we approached the second half. A lot of teams would probably quit in those situations. But we didn’t show any quitting. In many ways, we almost could have pulled out three points. If that game goes on for a few more minutes, I think we give ourselves a good chance to win.”
“This was probably our best half in a while,” added captain Patrice Bernier. We were very calm in possession. We didn’t panic. We could have been a bit more direct, which would have given them opportunities to clinch the win, but we remained calm. We believed in ourselves.”
“It takes resilience, perseverance and belief, more than anything,” said Daniel Lovitz. “We all know that the game is going to show us some things that are not really going to be in our favour sometimes. You give up goals early in the game, and the good thing about how early there were is that we had enough time to come back and claw our way back. Getting the goal from Nacho was huge, and being able to build on it was just a matter of time.”
