Montreal's Misery
Kamal Miller is gone. Is hope leaving with him?
It’s a bit of a cliché, but, like all cliches there is truth to the idea that you can’t win a championship in MLS in the spring. However, you can lose one.
You can get so buried that it doesn’t matter what you do for the rest of the year. You are chasing your shadow. The thing about a forced parity league is that it is hard to leapfrog multiple teams.
So, as much as I generally don’t look at the MLS standings until the first day of summer, I sometimes make an exception when peaking at the bottom of the standings. I did in 2018 when TFC’s struggles at balancing the CCL run put them in a big hole. I did the same thing last year when a five game losing streak made the arrival of the Italians less vital for 2022.
This year, I’m doing it again. Only I’m looking a bit further east, off Autoroute 20. CF Montreal, coming off their greatest season ever, are an absolute mess. It’s not particularly close right now. They are the worst team in the league by some measure.
Their one win was more than a bit fortunate, to say the least. They caught a tired Philly team (see note above about TFC struggling to balance the CCL), and a bizarre double reverse VAR call, to snatch a win from nothing. Without that minor miracle, this is a winless team we are talking about.
As it is, they are 1-0-5 for just 3 pts. More dire, they are a -13 on goal difference, having allowed a league worse 16 goals.
So, obviously they just traded their best defender.
In a move that has MLS watchers scratching their heads, Montreal sent Kamal Miller and $1.3 million in allocation to Inter Miami for midfielder Bryce Duke and winger Ariel Lassiter.
Yes, that says “and.”
Normally, teams pay about that to acquire a defender who played in the World Cup. Montreal is sending the money to Miami to move him. On the surface, this is bonkers.
The player they were after is clearly Duke, who they think they can turn into a creative midfield force that they are currently missing. Djordje Mihailovic was key to almost all of their success last year and his leaving has left a bigger hole than they perhaps thought it would.
As for Lassiter, he’s a depth piece. A journeyman MLSer that will do a job, but is not the focus of this move. No, they are clearly hoping that they can do for Duke what they did for Mihailovic. It’s a big ask. Duke is coming to the team older than Mihailovic was and does not generally have the same hype that Djordje did.
The more hopeful of the CF Montreal fanbase is hanging their hat on the idea that the club has a little bit of magic when it comes to coaching late-stage prospects — Duke turned 22 in February — into assets that they can benefit from before moving up a level, as they did with Mihailovic.
The question is whether that magic moved to Columbus with Wilfred Nancy. Hernan Losada’s reputation isn’t established enough to say one way of another if he can replicate it. Time will tell.
What we do know now, however, is that the worst defensive team in the league just got even thinner and less experienced at the back. Additionally, the club just shipped $1.3 million off to an Eastern Conference rival, meaning they don’t have the allocation available now to add a more established piece to fix their problems.
The most positive thing you can say about this move is that Montreal is staying consistent in their stated goal of looking to develop players . They aren’t making a desperation signing to make the bad stuff stop now. That pretty much never works in MLS.
Make no mistake: the bad stuff is unlikely to stop now. This team will very likely challenge for the Wooden Spoon. The question is whether they can put the pieces in place to allow them to step up again in 2024 or 2025 to contend. That seems to be Montreal’s thinking - be a team that takes a big run every couple years, sells high, strips down and starts the cycle again. Kind of like a junior hockey team, if you follow the CHL.
As for Miller, it must be said that he hasn’t looked all that settled this year. Perhaps it is a World Cup hangover, or the disappointment of not getting a move to Europe — a move he publicly said he wanted. Whatever it is, he needs to be better than he’s been. This is an opportunity to get a fresh start and work towards the European move he wants. Who knows, he might even get to play with an Argentine International in the summer.
A summer that looks like it’s going to be especially long at Stade Saputo.
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