NASL 1, MLS 0. Well, Sort of.
The Montreal Impact hosted the New York Red Bulls last night in front a near-capacity-crowd at Stade Saputo.
Ali Gerba scored the game's only goal as the Impact beat an MLS team for the first time in Montreal. (I would have preferred if he had scored that golden chance in last minutes of the return leg at Empire Field last week.) Nonetheless, the Impact looked like the stronger team on the pitch. Actually, they looked like the only team on the pitch.
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Let's be honest: New York didn't really want to play this game. Was it a case of too many games in a week? The team are probably still recovering from an intense 90 minutes in Los Angeles and have to prepare themselves for the Chivas USA game in Harrison, NJ this upcoming Sunday.
Personnally, I wasn't expecting much from the away team. I'm just glad that this event -not a match, an event- was well covered by the mass media. In the end, I'm also glad we won.
If the hype was all around the Red Bulls and Thierry Henry before the game, it certainly shifted during and after the game. The win will most likely give a boost not only to the first team but also to the marketing team for the weeks to come.
With minimal marketing effort (which was mainly put on the visiting team), the organization was able to get a strong media attention as well as a 12 000+ crowd. The spectators were certainly enjoying the show last night but it would be interesting to see if this will have an effect once the team goes back in that good old NASL league.
Let's just hope that the organization can keep the hype going until we reach next year's entrance in the MLS. In the meantime, we've got business to attend.
The Impact will be hosting the Railhawks this Saturday. Well ok, it's not the Red Bulls but Etienne Barbara certainly has more goals than Thierry Henry, hasn't he?
Highlights of the game with the usual over-dramatic music: