Former FC Edmonton and Montreal Impact players are being hinted as the key parts of a Quebec “national” team that will compete in a Marseille tournament at the end of June.

The newly crowned Canadian champions founds out Monday that they will face the San Jose Earthquakes and a to-be-decided Guatemalan league qualifier in CCL Group 5. The Impact could not have asked for a kinder draw.

In a match that featured the eruption of Mount Schallibaum, the expulsion of Alessandro Nesta and a controversial officiating decision that led to a Kansas City goal, the Montreal Impact did what its done since the beginning of the season. The team found a way to win, its 2-1 victory placing it atop the MLS Eastern Conference ladder.

With three goals over the course of the month of May — two of them game winners — Philadelphia Union striker Jack McInerney did enough to win the Player of the Month Award.

“I think Andy got picked,” Knighton said. “Camara is going to make that 99 per cent of the time – it’s unfortunate, because without the block Andy had 20 seconds before that, sprinting 40 yards and sliding in and knocking it out for a corner – it was fantastic.

Two hat tricks highlighted this past weekend's MLS action. Marco Di Vaio scored three in the first half as the Montreal Impact defeated the Philadelphua Union 5-3 on Saturday. Robbie Keane got three as the Los Angeles Galaxy defeated the Seattle Sounders 4-0 on Sunday.

“We showed a will to win, to play through difficult circumstances. This is a team that is willing to run for each other and to run for the team. We played well in the cold with 17,000 fans here to support us. We’re certainly on the right track,” declared head coach Marco Schallibaum in his post-game comments.

"I need tough challenges in my life," Dos Santos said from Sao Paulo in a teleconference. "My family is used to it. When I first spoke with John it was clear that this was a big challenge."

“I feel like on the road we’ve been a little bit too open. At times we’ve played quite well but our results haven’t been as good as I would have liked on the road so I felt we should become more difficult to play against,” Rennie opined. “I think the players did their jobs tonight. They made the game more compact and we weren’t as open and easy to play against.”

So, Whitecaps fans have something to chew on Wednesday morning. Would the Caps have been able to overcome the Galaxy by a 3-1 count Saturday had Johnny Leveron been sent off for his early two-footed scissor challenge on the Galaxy’s Jose Villarreal?