MONTREAL — It took most of the season for the Montreal Impact to find a starting lineup that they feel good about heading into the Major League Soccer playoffs.
It’s a veteran unit, even without 38-year-old star striker Didier Drogba, and they hope it will have enough offensive punch and defensive cohesion to down D.C. United in the single-game knockout playoff match Thursday night at rickety RFK Stadium, where they have never won (0-2-3).
"Some people will disagree with me on this but I like the fact that we have some veterans out there," forward Dominic Oduro said Wednesday. "When it comes to a stage like this you need veterans out there who can execute."
The starting 11 that has been used of late has only two players under 30 — 23-year-old defender Victor Cabrera and 25-year-old left back Ambroise Oyongo.
The rest are goalie Evan Bush, 30; right back Hassoun Camara, 33; centreback Laurent Ciman, 31; midfielders Marco Donadel, 33, Hernan Bernardello, 30 and Patrice Bernier, 37; and attacking players Oduro, Ignacio Piatti and Matteo Mancosu, all 31.
Drogba, who has a sore back and may also be in a snit over being dropped from the first 11, has been ruled out for the match and will not make the trip to Washington, D.C.
It all started when, with the Impact struggling on attack, Drogba was dropped from the starting lineup for a Sept. 28 game against San Jose, won 3-1 by Montreal. He was left out again for a 1-0 win in Orlando on Oct. 2 and rebelled when he was dropped a third time on Oct. 16, a 2-2 home draw with Toronto FC that secured a playoff berth.
Drogba asked to be taken out of the lineup altogether and didn’t show up at the game, for which he was fined an undisclosed amount. He also missed a season-ending 3-0 loss at New England on Sunday, when coach Mauro Biello rested nearly all his starters. Now it is quite possible that he has already played his last game for Montreal.
It is understandable that the Chelsea legend who scored 11 goals in as many games after joining the Impact last summer would balk at being used as a bench player but, at the time, the Impact were in danger of falling out of the playoff race and needed a jolt. Montreal have gone 6-3-3 without Drogba in the lineup this season. And Mancosu, who joined July 7 on loan from Bologna, had quickly developed a bond with the gifted Piatti.
The speedy Oduro and heady Bernier were also brought back in from the bench.
"I have a balance of experience, quality, physicality, and that’s what you try to find in your starting 11," said Biello. "We’ve had a lot of rotation this year for numerous reasons, like suspensions, injuries, national teams.
"But at the end you want to find an 11 that have that chemistry and cohesion to help the team."
The club also needed a shakeup in its mentality.
"You can’t just think you can just step on the field and you’re going to win," he said. "There needs to be the fight and the mindset to give yourself a chance to win because every team in this league is equal.
"There is not one team that is head and shoulders above everybody else."
It won’t be easy. D.C. ended the regular season on a 6-2-6 roll to clinch home field advantage in the knockout stage by one point over Montreal. In that stretch, a pair of 1-1 draws with the Impact were the only times they were held to fewer than two goals in a game.
D.C. also spent much of the season searching for a winning formula and found it after the mid-season addition of midfielder Lloyd Sam from the New York Red Bulls and striker Patrick Mullins, who has eight goals in 14 games. Elusive five-foot-three midfielder Luciano Acosta is another threat. And they have one of the league’s best goalkeepers in Bill Hamid.
"They’re scored a lot of goals at home and we need to neutralize that attack, but they have a lot of defensive players with experience," said Biello. "We need to be able to exploit them with our speed and put them in difficulty."
If they win, the Impact advance to the Eastern Conference semifinals, which would begin Sunday at Saputo Stadium against either the Red Bulls or New York City FC.
