Jun 10 Montreal Impact Substitution: Limniatis for De Santis

In a not so surprising move yesterday, the Montreal Impact announced that former long-time skipper Nick De Santis would be stepping down as Head coach in order to become the team's new technical director. You almost saw it coming as the Impact have been on a 6 game losing streak going back to May 10th as well as a scoreless drought of the same duration just recently broken in the 3-1 loss to Charleston on June 6th.

His replacement? Former Impact midfielder during eight seasons with the Impact, John Limniatis.

How bitter the irony for De Santis, who apparently advised Team owner Joey Saputo of his intentions to step down for the better of the team. De Santis, you will recall, became part of the coaching staff in the 2001 season replacing Valerio Gazzola during a season where the Impact went 10-14-2.

While John Limniatis is eager to take over the helm, he was careful to not undermine what the team, under De Santis has been working to achieve for the last stretch, a win at home and at least a .500 season. He stated that the fans would not see a drastic change, especially right away but hoped that the first change would be a Impact win on Friday the 13th against the Charleston Battery, who the Impact succeeded in scoring a goal against for the first time in 552 minutes of action.

Joey Saputo also acknowledged that sometimes effort is not necessarily indicative of the amounts of wins and losses that a team can accumulate as anyone who has been following the Impact lately can attest to.

While De Santis' new role has him supervising the technical team, the management of the team and reserve team, the Trois-Rivières Attak, as well as administrative duties his mandate will also be to consolidate the Quebec soccer pyramid at all levels.

Limniatis, the Impact's 7th coach, made a few tweaks of his own to the coaching staff and will count on three assistants for the season: Andrea Di Pietrantonio, who was named last Thursday, Marc Dos Santos, who is also the head coach of the Trois-Rivières Attak, and Youssef Dahha, who remains the goalkeeper coach.

Nick, thanks for the championship in 2004, as well as the regular-season titles in 2005 and 2006. Good luck in your new role.

John. Welcome and best of luck in the future. There is still time to at least get into the post season, and here's hoping the Impact players will react to this drastic, but much needed change of environment.

Hopefully this will be the extra spark that could set this once championship bound team, afire once again.