|
|
|
Home  Articles 98/99 Season Montreal soccer team makes poor impact
|
|
Montreal soccer team makes poor impact |
|
|
|
|
Written by Bill Beacon
|
|
Tuesday, 19 January 1999 |
During a stoppage in play, the house announcer says there are tickets available for the Montreal Impact's next home game.
Considering there were only about 300 fans on hand at the 21,273- capacity Molson Centre to hear the announcement, the news didn't come as a surprise.
"I thought people were starting to take to it last year," veteran defender Rudy Doliscat said of Montreal's two-year-old National Professional Soccer League franchise. "We had 12,000 for a game against Edmonton last season.
"I don't know why they're staying away this year. I just hope they come back."
Indoor soccer has not been the hit that team owner Joey Saputo hoped it would be when he decided to keep his relatively successful outdoor club together year-round by joining the NPSL.
The Impact emerged from a gruelling three-game weekend on Sunday with a pair of wins to improve to a respectable 9-9 for the season, but have not convinced hockey-mad Montreal to embrace the frantic indoor game.
They had the league's lowest average attendance -- 2,693 -- going into last weekend and managed little more than a tenth of that as a snowstorm kept fans at home for a 6-4 victory last Friday night over the Detroit Rockers. An announced crowd of 1,000 attended Sunday's 20-7 win over Harrisburg.
In comparison, their Canadian cousins in Edmonton average 5,437 a game.
Earlier this season, Saputo said the Impact needed 5,000 fans a game just to break even.
Talk is rife that Saputo will pull the plug on indoor soccer -- and perhaps even his outdoor team -- at the end of the season -- depleting an already barren pro soccer presence in Canada.
The country currently has only five pro teams: the Edmonton Drillers and the Impact in the NPSL and Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver in outdoor leagues. The Toronto Shooting Stars folded after only one NPSL season in 1996-97. "It's a shame if that happened," said Impact defender John Limniatis.
|
|
|
|