For several hundred youth soccer players in Pierrefonds, Wednesday night marked the long-anticipated return of the Montreal Impact, who have made the local suburb an annual stop on its public practice tour schedule.

At the start of the 2011 NASL season, the Montreal Impact had six French players on its roster, Now, that number is down to three. The Impact announced Wednesday what has been speculated about for the last week; that French attacker Idriss Ech Chergui and defender Richard Pelletier wouldn’t be back with the team.

At the start of the NASL season, you’d have predicted that any 2011 match between the Carolina RailHawks and the Montreal Impact would be a top-of-table clash. Only the RailHawks have kept their part of the bargain. When surveying the Impact’s 2-0 road loss to Carolina Sunday, you would be excused for assuming that the RailHawks were preparing to jump to MLS next season while Montreal was, well,just a bad team.

A change is as good as a rest. For the Montreal Impact, that old adage certainly held true as they provided fans with their best effort in some time, coming away from their match with the Puerto Rico Islanders with a scoreless tie in front of a crowd announced at just over 10,000 at Stade Saputo.

When Eduardo Sebrango announced his retirement from soccer earlier in April, he was stuck on 98 career Div. 2 goals. He wasn’t going to make 100. Stop the presses. Sebrango will be going for goals 99 and 100 — and, for the offensively challenged Montreal Impact, they can’t come soon enough. The 38-year-old’s retirement lasted just a little bit more than two months.

Marc Dos Santos quit before he was pushed. The Montreal Impact announced Tuesday that Dos Santos has resigned his post as the team’s head coach. Sunday’s 1-0 defeat at FC Edmonton marked left the Impact with a shocking 2-7-3 record, good for second-last in the NASL.

Ding dong, the witch is dead. That’s how FC Edmonton’s players and supporters feel after they broke their jinx against the Montreal Impact, winning 1-0 at Foote Field Sunday on the strength of a Kyle Porter wonder goal.

FC Edmonton will try and break its jinx against the Montreal Impact this Sunday. The largest crowd to ever see FC Edmonton play at Foote Field is expected for the weekend match-up, and they’ll want to see the home side, currently sitting second in the NASL table, reverse its recent run of form against the other Canadian team in the league.

It was announced as a sell-out crowd of 13,034 in Montreal this afternoon, but more than a few ticketholders found something else to do on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Those who did make their way to Saputo Stadium were treated to one of the Impact’s better outings as the home club played a scoreless tie against a visiting Fort Lauderdale team that had gone undefeated in their last four games.

Now that the Montreal Impact has made its major sponsorship announcement for the 2012 MLS season, it can begin the needed housecleaning. On Wednesday, the club announced that it has released French defender Kevin Hatchi, beginning the needed purge. In its final NASL season, the Impact has won just two of its first 10 games, both over FC Edmonton.