Two of the three goals came in added time — one in the first half and another in the second — with Thierry Henry notching both the home side’s tallies while Marco Di Vaio got one (and very nearly two) back for the visitors.

“I felt all day that we were going to have a good result,” said head coach Marco Schallibaum. “I also felt it yesterday in training and during my pregame speech tonight. The guys were pumped.

Asked if the change in formation was something that would be repeated in the future, coach Schallibaum, replied, “As a coach you have to be flexible and able to put something fresh into the game. Today it worked well with everyone playing well together. Paponi did well, for his first time, getting a goal."

“We worked throughout the week to prepare the team as a staff and today it was my job to be on the sideline to encourage the team and to manage the rhythm,” Biello said to open his postgame comments. “Obviously we would have loved to win the game but, unfortunately, it didn’t happen. Overall I think there were a lot of positives from that game.”

Completely dominated in the opening half, Montreal gave up the first goal only five minutes after play got underway.

“He played very, very well. He didn’t make any mistakes. He was solid and he concentrated,” said Head Coach Marco Schallibaum when asked for his assessment of the youngster’s performance. "He also played a simple game, like I asked of him. He did very well for a first game."

It’s not often when a player from a 0-0 draw gets Player of the Week consideration, but D.C. United had no business getting out of New Jersey with a point.

“It wasn’t the kind of second half we wanted to have,” admitted captain Davy Arnaud.” If we’re going to be honest with ourselves, we weren’t in the second half, it was our worst half of the year, I would say, but we still came out with three points and in MLS you have to grind out results sometimes. That’s just the way it is. At the end of the day we leave with another win.

The Montreal Impact walked onto the pitch at Seattle’s Century Link Field and, in front of almost 39,000 of the most rabid fans in MLS, handed their hosts a 1-0 defeat, signalling to the rest of the league that the sophomore version of the club might bear very little resemblance to last season’s inaugural edition.

“We’ll be playing one of the best teams in MLS (Seattle) and there’ll be 50,000 people cheering against us but we’ve done everything we can. We showed during the matches in Florida that we were a good team but Saturday is another story.”