IMPACT NEEDS TO IMPROVE ON DEFENCE
Has allowed league-high 38 goals, and nine of those have come off set plays,
Injuries have been a problem for the Impact during its first season in Major League Soccer, along with an inability to stop the opposition from scoring.
The Impact has allowed a league-high 38 goals in 21 games, an average of 1.8 per game. Eastern Conference rival Toronto FC – the worst squad in the 18-team league – has the worst goals for/goals against ratio at minus-13, compared with minus-10 for Montreal. But that’s not something for the Impact to brag about.
Goals scored from set pieces have been the Achilles heel for the Impact. The club has conceded nine goals off corner kicks and free kicks, excluding penalty kicks. That’s the most in the league, with Real Salt Lake next with eight.
Impact head coach Jesse Marsch has made defending against set pieces a priority in practice. But, for whatever reason, the team continues to struggle in games, including a 2-1 loss to the Union in Philadelphia Saturday night when the winning goal, scored in stoppage time, came off a throw-in of all things.
“We’re just going to figure out how to deal with them … everything from strategies to how to deal with them in good ways. It needs to be a focus,” Marsch said after practice Tuesday as the Impact prepared to face the New England Revolution for the first time this season Wednesday night at Saputo Stadium (8 p.m., TSN2, RDS, CJAD Radio-800).
Marsh said giving up a goal on a set piece can sometimes be attributed to a mental lapse by one or more players, but other factors have also been obvious.
“Often we’re out-manned. I mean, we are,” Marsch said. “The size of our team … we knew from the beginning that this was going to be an important emphasis for us. It’s not like we put the biggest and strongest team out on the field.
“But at the same time, it’s more about the mentality of identifying dangerous moments on set pieces and dealing with things in a better way.”
Defending against set pieces is a team issue where every player, regardless of position, has some responsibility, he said.
But the loss of experienced central defenders Matteo Ferrari and Nelson Rivas, both out of action for recent games and likely for another week at least, has hurt.
Dennis Iapichino, a 21-year-old Swiss defender signed six days ago, will see his first action against the Revolution. Another newcomer, Italian defender Alessandro Nesta, isn’t match-fit yet, but could be in the lineup Saturday night against the Dynamo in Houston.
Defender Shavar Thomas, who is expected to make his sixth consecutive start and 12th of the season, said defending set pieces is about winning individual battles.
“You’ve just (got) to win your duels,” he said. “If I’m up against a guy, I’ve got to out-compete him and get the ball out of my area. That’s what it comes down to. There are no plays that we can set up to defend set pieces more than just to be competitive.
“A lot of times, we get caught not ready and teams, I’m pretty sure, are watching our game tapes and trying to get on top of us that way, so we’ve just got to better.”
The Impact sits in eighth place in the 10-team Eastern Conference at 6-12-3, including a 5-3-2 record at home. Montreal can move ahead of sixth-place New England (6-8-4) with a win.
The good news for the Impact is that the Revolution has never won on Canadian soil, posting an 0-0-1 record against the Whitecaps in Vancouver and 0-2-6 against Toronto, which beat the Revolution 1-0 in Boston on Saturday. The Revolution also struggles offensively on set pieces, scoring only one goal that way this season.
“The set piece stuff is not about soccer stuff, it’s guys taking responsibility on the field,” Impact captain Davy Arnaud said. “It’s a mentality. It’s determination not to give up a goal in an important moment.
“We said at the beginning of the season that it was something we wanted to be really good at and we’ve been pretty poor in terms of that,” he said. “Every team sees film, so there’s no getting away from the fact we’ve given up a lot of goals that way and that teams feel it’s an area where they can take advantage of us.
“We can’t change the goals we’ve taken in the past from those, but now, moving forward, we had to put in our minds that we’re really going to limit teams’ opportunities from those situations.”