Montreal Impact are representing the league
Photo: Thomas Gosse (Prost Amerika)
On Wednesday, Montreal Impact will play the first leg of the CONCACAF Champions League Final against Mexico City’s Club America.
America start as the favourites although their recent dire league form gives Montreal hope. Montreal’s own dire league form is surely more to do with placing greater emphasis on the CCL, which probably cannot be said for Gustavo Matosas’ side.
In his CONCACAF Preview, our Mexican Correspondent Jonny Rico pointed out that Club America may be the least Mexican of sides in Liga MX.
With just three Mexican players, this LM v MLS match could not be further removed from the USA v Mexico cum dos-a-cero narrative before you even start to look at Club America’s opponents.
If Mexico’s representatives in this year’s final are not all that Mexican, how American are Impact de Montreal?
Starting with the basics, Montreal are not American (defined in the narrower USA meaning) at all.
They are Canadian and qualified for the CCL as winners of the Voyageurs Cup, Canada’s equivalent of the US Open Cup. To that extent, they do not represent the USA at all. You won’t be hearing the Star Spangled Banner at the final.
They do however represent Major League Soccer in its hitherto unsuccessful battle to claim any sort of equivalency to the might of Liga MX. Only Real Salt Lake have ever reached a final (under the modern format). They lost and no MLS side has looked as even half as well prepared to go one step further since.
The fleur-de-lis in the top left is a symbol of Quebec
Montreal is of course more than just Canadian.
It is the largest city in the predominantly French-speaking province of Quebec, and its logo is proudly Quebecois.
The fleur-de-lis on the Quebec flag is a symbol of Quebec’s origins which hark back to monarchical France.
The symbol is less used in France itself these days due to its connection to monarchy on a staunchly republican modern France, but its symbolism in Quebec has survived.
The City of Montreal itself is more bilingual than the remainder of Quebec with its western half more anglophone than the east.
Two referendums in the late 20th Century rejected separation from Canada, the 1995 one by the tiniest of majorities, 54, 278 votes out of over 5 million.
Since then, sentiment for separation (or at least another vote) has waned a little and no referendum seems likely in the short term despite the separatists keeping a close eye on events in Scotland last year.
Nonetheless, to portray Montreal as simply a Canadian side, while accurate, belies the very distinct Quebecois identity of the club.
None of that however should matter on Wednesday when the side proudly represents the good ship MLS and all who proudly sail in her.
While a Montreal win would not be a continuation or even a sub-chapter of the dos-a-cero story in any way, it would mark a historic and landmark moment for Major League Soccer and help to shake off its traditional inferiority complex towards Liga MX.
When Major League Soccer’s head honchos fell asleep at night imagining how it would feel to finally win the CCL, they probably pictured Landon Donovan in a Galaxy strip scoring both goals and then running around the field carrying a US flag fluttering in the wind.
Should the Impact prevail, it will look nothing like that but don’t let that detract from the achievement such an outcome will represent.
It will be MLS’ finest hour and we should all, nous tous, join in celebrating and congratulating them.
