The Montreal Impact’s brain trust has told seven players who represented the club in NASL that they won’t be part of the team’s MLS plans for 2012. Striker Ali Gerba — who played for the Canadian national team as recently as this summer’s Gold Cup — is the biggest name on the list.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

But the Impact looked nothing like the team that beat FC Edmonton Saturday, gifting two first-half goals to the worst offence in the league. Atlanta’s 2-1 win at home allowed the club to earn its first NASL win of 2011, and asked many more questions of an Impact team that has looked unstoppable in its two wins over FC Edmonton this season, and awful against the rest of the league.

Both Montreal and FC Edmonton came into today’s match at Saputo stadium hoping for a positive outcome. But only the Impact and the large majority of the 11,232 spectators who turned out on the most clement day for soccer Montreal has seen so far this spring,were happy after 90 minutes. The Impact came out on top, 2-0, outshooting FCE 16-6 in a lopsided affair.

But, the Montreal Impact should be the one going through. All Gerba had to do was convert what was a pretty automatic scoring chance in the dying seconds of extra time. But, with Whitecaps keeper Jay Nolly at his mercy and no defender in sight, Gerba's header crashed off the post. The Whitecaps escaped with a 2-1 aggregate win; a 1-1 draw on the night.