The Impact keeper is back for an eighth season
Evan Bush is ready. More than ready. With the season approaching quickly, Evan Bush is already back at work. The American goalkeeper, who came to Montreal in 2011, will begin his eighth season with the Bleu-blanc-noir, as the last remaining player from the Impact’s original MLS squad. He went back to his native Ohio for the holidays, but the pitch has been on his mind for a while now.
“Both my family and my wife’s family are from Cleveland, so we spent a lot of time there over the holidays,” said Bush. “The time we don’t get to spend there the rest of the year with the family, we get it all at one time. It’s nice, but it gets a bit long and there’s this itch to get back on the field and into your routine and environment that you’re comfortable with.”
That environment for now is the gym at Centre Nutrilait, where a motivated Evan Bush is excited for the season to begin. For Evan, this particular offseason has been a little more off-putting than others.
“It’s a long offseason, longer than we’ve had in the last couple of years, just due to not being in the playoffs” explained Bush. “It was a bit too long, to be honest. You like to get the rest and recovery, but coming off a season where we didn’t reach our goals and expectations as a team, we want to get back on the field and make amends for how the season went.”
For Bush, the offseason was also a great time to get his body, which he takes very seriously, back to its full potential.
“I use this time to get my body back to the base foundation I want it to be at for the start of the season,” said Bush. “During the course of the season, I might lose a few pounds, because of not being in the gym as often and not being able to maintain certain things. I use the offseason to do that, and hope that I can impress people and do things that the club wants me to do.”
Evan Bush and the Montreal Impact were on the field today, at Olympic Stadium, for their first training session of the year, before flying to Miami to begin preseason training. The season opener is set for March 4, against the Vancouver Whitecaps FC at BC Place. Right now, that’s the most important date on Bush’s calendar.
“If you look too much at the big picture and getting into the playoffs to make amends for last year, you can forget about the first game of the season,” said Bush. “For me, I try not to look forward to game two, or three, or 34, because if you’re not in the moment during a particular game and you’re not completely focused, you’re going to get caught, especially in this league. There’s no Barcelona or Manchester City that can float through 70 per cent of the game and still get results. This league, it’s driven by parity, which is why you have to step on the field with the right intentions every time. So, for us, when we step on the field next week, our mindset needs to be to focus on our first game on March 4.”
