“I was fined last week for claiming that the referee was one-sided. I’m not sure how scathing that was but obviously I’m not going to be able to make comments but I think it’s pretty obvious what happened out there,” said Impact head coach Jesse Marsch, obviously less than thrilled with the efforts of referee Sorin Stoica.

And that’s the thing, throughout this whole process, the Impact’s front office has worked in a very different way than we’d normally see in MLS. Teams usually don’t publicly declare their interest in players or confirm that contract offers have been made.

"A couple of weeks ago we had some clubs ask us about his services," Cochrane said. "We've toyed with the idea and continued to kind of think about whether to loan him out. Quito was one of those clubs, and a couple of clubs in Mexico also."