Reactions to the Impact’s Chicago expedition have been mixed. Ballou Jean-Yves Tabla’s delightful goal from distance saw the deadlock broken for, it seemed, yet another wonderful Bleu-blanc-noir win in Illinois, until Luis Solignac deleted the visitors’ lead seconds later.
The big picture, however, is far from disheartening: despite injuries to some regular starters, the Impact just picked up a second straight road tie against a Conference opponent, leading the team to the fifth-best away record in the East.
“We’re playing three straight away games, and we’ve got two ties right now,” said Dominic Oduro. “In this league, you take that as a positive. And we took points away from them. We’re waiting for our home games to capitalize on future chances and get some points.”
“We were able to come back and fight from being down, gain a lead and put in two goals on the road,” added Chris Duvall. “It’s impressive, especially in this league where it’s so difficult to go away from home and get goals. We showed good fight to come back from down and that’s something we’ll definitely try and build on. We just got to clean up the late goals.”
The Bleu-blanc-noir’s next away date, at the LA Galaxy this Friday night at 10:30pm (TVA Sports, TSN, 98,5FM & CJAD 800), is as good an opportunity as any to address this issue. The last time the Impact played at StubHub Center, on September 12, 2015, it left the premises with a commendable 0-0 tie. And the team has never conceded to the Galaxy in the final quarter-hour of games.
“We’ve got to learn – and I know I sound like a broken record – how to finish games,” Oduro said. “Every day, we have to remember and remind ourselves that we have to be smart when we’ve got a chance to win a game, and try and finish it. It hurts, but again, it’s away from home, so we’ll gladly take that point.”
Added goalkeeper Evan Bush: “The performance wasn’t always pretty [on Saturday]. But it was a business-like performance.”
