http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/12/sport ... oref=login
*Making a Profit Not Montreal's Game*
By JACK BELL
Published: July 12, 2005
The Montreal Impact speaks the language of soccer, albeit in French and with a novel business approach in a cutthroat sport.
In North America, in a sport that always seems to be chasing an elusive profit, the Impact is an oddity. It is a nonprofit outfit whose goal, according to Joey Saputo, the team's president, is to promote and develop soccer in Quebec and across Canada.
"We are structured this way because we wanted to get into people's minds that we are not in this to make money, and my job as president is to either break even or make a profit," Saputo said in a telephone interview last week.
Montreal is one of three Canadian outposts (Toronto and Vancouver are the others) in the United Soccer Leagues' First Division, which is one rung below Major League Soccer on the professional food chain. Montreal is the defending league champion and has started this season on a 12-game unbeaten streak (8-0-4).
The club is owned by Saputo Inc. (the largest cheese producer in Canada), the Province of Quebec and Hydro-Québec. The team plays at Claude-Robillard Sports Complex, averaging 11,000 fans a game. It plans to build a privately financed $15 million stadium and complex, which Saputo said he hoped would play host to the final of the world youth championships in 2007.
Saputo's and the Impact's dedication to resurrecting the professional game in Canada is more than lip service. The Impact has six players with the national team for the current Concacaf Gold Cup, but it still managed a 2-0 victory over league-leading Richmond last week.
"The 1994 World Cup left the United States with a legacy of money that it put into development of soccer, making it a force in world soccer," Saputo said. "The U.S. is among the top 10 teams in the world, and where is Canada? No. 85. Where did we go wrong?"
With no national professional league, Canada does have a long way to go. It will not be going to the World Cup next year, and its youth team was eliminated in the first round of the recent world championships in the Netherlands. There has been talk of M.L.S. expanding north, perhaps to Toronto, but that city's plans for a new stadium have gone off track.
What about Montreal?
"The only time I've ever talked to anyone from M.L.S. was when Sunil Gulati called about one of my players," Saputo said. Gulati is the president of Kraft Soccer, which runs the New England Revolution, and he was interested in defender Gabriel Gervais, the U.S.L.'s defender of the year last season.
"Looking at the numbers, especially the $15 million expansion fee, we wouldn't even be in a position to go to M.L.S.," Saputo said. "Right now, we are content to be making a little money and reinvesting it in soccer in Quebec and Canada."
