On Thursday, the team announced that five players eligible under the Can-con rule — and who played with the team in its final NASL season — will go to camp in Guadalajara, Mexico with the club. Eddy Sebrango, Simon Gatti, Mircea Ilcu, Nevio Pizzolitto and Reda Agourram will all get the chance to make the MLS club.

In front of 12,247 fans Sunday, the home side gave head coach Nick De Santis the best possible birthday present, prevailing in a 1-0 decision over the high-flying Carolina RailHawks, who have already clinched first place in the NASL this season and with it a bye for the opening go-round.

Tonight’s adversaries played the final 60 minutes a man short but, despite this assistance, the best the Impact could manage was a 1-1 tie against the Puerto Rico Islanders.

As it turned out, things went a lot better for the Strikers than they did for the Impact. The teams avoided a third sister-kissing result with the home side coming away with their desired result in a 1-0 contest.

The club confirmed Wednesday that Senegalese forward Mignane Diouf was detained at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Sunday, accused of stealing a pair of headphones worth US$600.

Only four of the dozen men who took to the pitch dressed in Impact blue for the team’s 2-0 triumph Saturday against the visiting NSC Minnesota Stars were participants in Montreal’s season opener in April.

With his team's final NASL season circling the drain, Impact coach Nick De Santis put out a line-up that some may have felt was randomly drawn from a hat, but one that paid dividends as the Montreal side ran roughshod over the last-place Atlanta Silverbacks, taking a 4-0 decision in front of some 11,000 delighted fans.

Coming into tonight’s game against FC Tampa Bay — needing to make up a point a game on the sixth-place Fort Lauderdale over the course of the season’s last nine games in order to take part in the postseason — the Montreal Impact tonight snatched a draw from the jaws of victory, as the visiting FC Tampa Bay came back from a two-goal deficit at the 84-minute mark to end the night in a 3-3 draw.

By the time the whistle blew ending the hostilities, both streaks had come to an end as the hosts took the game by a 1-0 score with 38-year-old Eddy Sebrango giving his team the win and taking the team scoring lead with three goals and six points despite having played in only six of the Impact’s 18 games thus far.

Impact coach and technical director Nick De Santis said after practice yesterday that he wanted to see more initiative on the part of his men, particularly in the visiting Atlanta Silverbacks’ third of the field. He got what he wanted from Eduardo Sebrango who scored two on the afternoon with the second allowing the Impact to snatch a tie from the jaws of defeat and taking him to the century mark for his career.