2020 Season Preview: Montreal Impact
/Point-above-replacement values are explained here. Non-penalty expected goals + expected assists are explained here, and you can see all players’ xG+xA in our interactive expected goals tables. Touch percent is the percentage of total team touches by that player while he is on the field, which can be found in our interactive expected passing tables.
The Montreal Impact go into 2020 with some excitement - Thierry Henry is the manager! Tempered by a lot of question marks - Is Thierry Henry a GOOD manager? How does he want to play? Who scores the goals? Can the defense hold up? In light of those questions, 2020 will probably be a rebuilding year. Montreal returns about 65% of their minutes from 2019, the 8th fewest in the league, but have so far brought in only one or maybe two actual starters. They clearly need a few more pieces to get them close to playoff contention. It’s not a terrible strategy to let Henry work with what he has and then figure out in the summer and next winter what’s missing, but it could make for a long 2020.
2019 in Review
2019 Montreal was really not that bad under Remi Garde. As late as June 30th, they had an 87% chance to make the playoffs (via 538), were sitting in third in the East, and were projected to finish fourth. Between then and August 21st, when Garde was fired, they won just once in 8 games, but they were still at 63% to make the playoffs at the end of that stretch. Many teams hit similar late-summer slumps and turned out fine. The Impact’s defense was very very unlucky in 2019 under Garde - they allowed 11 more goals than expected through July. If it was that stretch alone that got him fired, it was probably harsh.
The team did get very slightly better under Garde’s replacement, Wilmer Cabrera. They went from -0.1 xGD per game to -0.02 xGD, but won just twice and played themselves out of the playoffs.
Montreal had a solid defense and a very subpar offense in 2019. They were seventh in the league in xGA, but 6th worst in xGF.
Offseason Changes
Oddly, though, Montreal are returning just one or two (depending on how you count) of their starting defenders from 2019, and all of their starting attack - I’ll dig into this later.
For now, though, let’s devote a few words to the recently departed club legend Ignacio Piatti. Injuries limited Piatti to just 11 games and 750 minutes in 2019, and the team has a promising group of young wingers who need game time to flourish. It was probably time for him to move on. But the career he had in Montreal and MLS was tremendous.
Since joining the Impact in 2014, Piatti was responsible for 34% of the team’s goals, either from goals or assists, and 27% of the team’s expected goals. That jumps to 44% and 38% if we exclude 2014 and 2019, which were shortened for him. More important than the numbers, which were tremendous, Piatti did stuff like this. The Impact without Piatti are at a significant artistic deficit.
2020 Roster Outlook
Let’s talk about the roster, which probably looks something like this:
Goalkeepers
Death, taxes, and Evan Bush in the net for Montreal - right? Evan Bush has been the team’s starter since 2015, but Montreal left him exposed in the expansion draft, and Clement Diop has gotten some starts during preseason and in their first CCL match.
Neither is spectacular as a shot-stopper:
Note that Diop’s best season (2016) came here on just 14 shots.
Evan Bush’s lack of shot-stopping was a key factor in Montreal vastly underperforming their xGA in 2019. This leaves Montreal looking pretty underwhelming in goal, though third-string James Pantemis may turn out to be the team’s goalkeeper of the future.
Defense
As mentioned above, Montreal in their underlying metrics were good on defense (though they were quite bad in terms of real goals). A lot of this probably came at the expense of getting numbers forward on offense. They sat very deep, and looked to attack with just 4 or 5 when they won the ball. Henry will have to get the team playing with better balance to have success in 2020.
Montreal’s backline right now is a little bit thin. Rudy Camacho will anchor it, and he did a lot of good things for them last season:
He can pass, and win the ball, and was generally the center back to start Montreal’s counters (although they did this weird thing where every ball from the middle immediately went to the wings - he wasn’t exactly starting counters with 50-yard bombs to someone in space).
Right now, 38 year-old Rod Fanni is the starter next to him. Fanni is both less mobile and a worse passer, and it wouldn’t hurt to find an upgrade. Behind those two are Luis Binks, a promising but unproven English international, and Joel Waterman, a transfer from CPL. Waterman’s progress will be fascinating to watch from an analytics perspective, as it lends a data point to the question of how a CPL player translates to MLS. Jukka Raitala can also fill in in the middle, but he will probably start on the left, although he’s been hurt in preseason.
Montreal has two right backs who are both young and fun. Clement Bayiha is just 20, can actually play all over. Karifa Yao is 19. Of all the team’s prospects, Bayiha might have the brightest future. But he still only has 500 MLS minutes under his belt.
Midfielders
Saphir Taider is terribly underrated. He does it all for the Impact:
From chance creation and dribbling to making the midfield engine run and picking up ball recoveries. If there’s one flaw to his game, it’s his shot map:
He has a penchant for letting it fly 30 yards from goal. Like Hakim Ziyech, you’re willing to tolerate some of that decision-making for what he does everywhere else on the field.
Samuel Piette is very strong defensively next to Taider, though he could stand to improve his passing. Especially last season, when Montreal looked to play almost exclusively on the break, Piette wasn’t able to often ping long balls out to the wings to find their attackers in space.
After Piette and Taider, though, the midfield is very thin and very young. Possible starting CAM Mathieu Choiniere is only 21, and started just 6 games last year. His backup (or starter), Shamit Shome, is only 22. Neither has put up great numbers in their limited MLS minutes. No one else in that group - Steeven Saba, Amar Sejdic, and Emanuel Maciel - is even close to a sure thing.
As with the defense, Montreal is taking a lot of chances on young players and high variance guys. This isn’t a terrible way to approach a rebuild. Take some chances on players, give some minutes to the young guys, and see who pans out by the summer or next winter.
Forwards
Unless Henry can sprinkle some magic center forward dust on Maxi Urruti, Anthony Jackson-Hamel, or Bojan (and he very well could!), Montreal needs a center forward. Bojan only had limited minutes last year, but he put up only .41 xG + xA per 90. That’s Sam Johnson, Fanendo Adi, Dom Badji-level. So he can be your starting forward, but not if you want your attack to be good. Maybe he improves by playing closer to goal, (he was more of a second forward last season) but that seems unlikely. Urruti was also not that good in that spot with a similar attack feeding him the ball (0.32 xG + xA per 90 - so even worse).
On the other hand, maybe Montreal’s wingers improve enough to get Bojan and Urruti on the end of great enough chances this year that they can’t help but score. Montreal’s winger corps, between Quioto, Lappalainen, Okwonkwo is strong:
Quioto is probably an elite MLS winger. And Lappalainen and Okwonkwo are only 21 and 22. Behind them, Ballou Jean-Yves Tabla is still just 20.
So there’s a lot to be excited about there. The Impact probably just need a DP center forward to tie the room together.
2020 Expectations
Given their youth and their lack of depth, Montreal’s floor is pretty low. If the Impact has to play any long stretches without either Piette or Taider, the midfield will be in bad shape. I think, too, that their forward options limit the team’s ceiling. Even though the wingers are very capable of creating chances, Urruti and Bojan don’t seem like the right guys to be able to finish them. That said, the team has a lot of young, high variance players who may pan out. and a young, high variance coach who may pan out. That’s not likely a recipe for success in 2020, but it might be for 2021 and beyond.