Defender Steve Trittschuh’s steady play is a big reason the Montreal Impact won the A-League regular-season title and is favored to retain its championship trophy.
The Montreal Impact clinched the A-League regular season title with a 3-2 victory in its final game against the New York Centaurs Sept. 11, climaxing a four-month long duel with the Seattle Sounders.
The victory gave Montreal 51 points, the same amount as Seattle, its season-long nemesis and winner of all four meetings between the two teams this season.
It was the Impact, however, which took first place by virtue of a better goal difference, plus-20 to plus-16 for the Sounders.
What makes the Impact’s run so impressive is that, in the offseason, the team lost seven starters from the squad that won the championship in 1994.
Credit the Impact ownership group with not only filling in the gaps, but, perhaps, even improving on last year’s product.
Among the newcomers to shine for the Impact were Paulinho and Paul Dougherty, but no addition was more important than defender Steve Trittschuh.
Along with local veteran John Limniatis, Trittschuh anchored the middle of the Montreal defense, which allowed 27 goals in 24 games this season. Goalkeepers Paolo Ceccarelli and Pat Onstad combined for 10 shutouts, a new team record.
“In many ways, Steve and I are very much alike, and that’s why I think we work well together,” says Limniatis, who is the team’s sweeper, although he and Trittschuh switch regularly during a game.
“If I go on a man, he covers up, and if he goes on a man, I cover up. When you have good players, that’s not difficult to achieve.”
Trittschuh’s steady play has is appreciated by his coach.
“Up to now, he’s played very well. I’m quite satisfied,” said Impact coach Valerio Gazzola. “He should have made the all-star team again this year.”
Instead, Trittschuh was overlooked for the all-star team for the first time in four seasons.
“Val looks to me to give some experience and maybe calm some young players down, but I haven’t really had to do that,” says Trittschuh, not the most flamboyant of players, but one who seems to pop up at the right time, at both ends of the field. He’s scored three goals this season on well-chosen ventures upfield.
“Everybody’s been playing very well. I just want to keep playing sound defense, and hopefully I can catch a goal here and there,” the Illinois native says.
Montreal beckoned once before
Trittschuh joined the Impact at the start of this year after previous stints with the Ft. Lauderdale Strikers (1994) and Tampa Bay Rowdies (1989-93), but he may have come to Montreal sooner had he chosen baseball over soccer.
“The Montreal Expos drafted me out of high school,” Trittschuh explains. “But at the time I had already accepted a soccer scholarship. I always loved playing soccer because I like to keep moving. I just thought baseball was a little boring.”
Although Trittschuh has never been able to plan his future in the long term, he has no regrets.
“I’ve had a long, successful career so far in soccer, and I’d like to keep it going,” he says. “I’ve visited places, if I had played baseball, I’d never think of going. I’ve visited, I think, 35 different countries now. It’s all because of soccer.”
Trittschuh has played first division soccer in the Netherlands and Czechoslovakia, but his fondest memories come from his travels in Italy. That’s where, as a member of the U.S. national team, he played in the 1990 World Cup.
“That was probably the pinnacle of my career,” says Trittschuh. “Just experiencing that, playing against the top players in the world, it was an indescribable experience.”
Following the World Cup, Trittschuh joined Sparta Prague in Czechoslovakia.
“I was there for nine months,” Trittschuh recalls. “Actually, they wanted to buy my contract, but I just couldn’t live there anymore. At the time, they were just turning over from communism to a new political system.
“[Sparta Prague] did all they could, my wife had a job there… but then I thought, Bora [Milutinovic] was the new coach [of the U.S. national team], so why don’t I come back and get a head start on some of the players and learn his system … I guess that turned out to be one of my worse decisions.”
The following winter, when his contract with the national team expired, Trittschuh was unceremoniously released, without any explanation.
“I got a letter in the mail saying my insurance was being stopped,” Trittschuh recalls. “That’s how I found out.”
Trittschuh, however, believes he made the right decision when he signed with the Impact last spring. He wanted a chance at winning a championship, and he certainly has one now with the Impact, which shares with the Sounders the role as co-favorites to capture the A-League title.
by Soccer America correspondent Marc Tougas