And, on Wednesday, the team announced that it would be dropping ticket prices for the 2013 season, something owner Joey Saputo hinted at on Twitter the day before. Tickets have dropped 15 per cent on average, while season-ticket holders will get what the Impact is calling a “10 per cent rebate” on 2012 packages.

And that’s the thing, throughout this whole process, the Impact’s front office has worked in a very different way than we’d normally see in MLS. Teams usually don’t publicly declare their interest in players or confirm that contract offers have been made.

“It’s the kind of game soccer players want to play, from the time they’re very little, in a stadium like this one and in front of a crowd that is as supportive as this one.”

“I am very pleased to confirm that we will be playing our first game at Saputo Stadium on June 16th, as planned,” he declared. “At the outset of the work in October, 2011, we explained that our timetable was very tight but that we only had one scenario — to play here on the 16th of June.

As for that July schedule Montreal goes to Philadelphia on the 14th, hosts New England on the 18th, travels to Houston on the 21st and hosts the Red Bulls on the 28th. With so many games around the date of the friendly, some serious questions would need to be asked of the Impact if any of the first-team regulars get significant minutes for a revenue-generating friendly.

“When we get close to the 20,000 capacity of Saputo Stadium, above the average capacity of the league, we feel pretty satisfied,” Legendre said.

The Impact will play at the Big O until the Stade Saputo renovations are done during the 2012 campaign. But the team struck a deal with the Olympic park, which guarantees games will be played at the Big O in 2013, 2014 and 2015 as well.

In a pre-game press conference Sunday afternoon, Impact President Joey Saputo and Richard Legendre, Executive VP of the Impact and Saputo Stadium, announced modifications to both the schedule of activity and the design parameters of the upcoming expansion to the team’s home field. Disappointed in the offers received for the initial tendering of contracts for the project, Saputo told the media that in order to respect the $23-million budget, the construction will begin in September, rather than in July as announced earlier, and that the refurbished stadium would not be ready in time for opening day of the Impact’s first MLS season.

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.

The Montreal Impact will remain the Montreal Impact when the club makes the move to MLS next season. The team announced Monday that it will retain the name in 2012, ending all speculation that the club would rebrand itself for MLS. Instead, the Impact follows the lead set by three other Div-2 clubs — Seattle Sounders, Portland Timbers and Vancouver Whitecaps — that all kept their names when they made the moves to ML