Vancouver Hosts Montreal For Une Petite Guerre; First Kick March 10

Last week, I ran down the list of potential MLS First Kick opponents for the Vancouver Whitecaps. I said that the Montreal Impact were both the most likely and most desirable of opponents, then asked who you wanted to see. Almost 80% of you said Montreal.

Well, we're all going to be pretty happy today as Major League Soccer announced the Whitecaps will host the Montreal Impact March 10 at BC Place. The game will be broadcast live on TSN.

South of the border, American fans are angsting about a First Kick schedule that will include the decidedly non-glamourous FC Dallas - New York Red Bulls matchup as NBC's marquee debut. But that's just the inferior American market. Here in Canada we can look forward to Canada's newest Major League Soccer team and its oldest professional soccer club squaring off in an old, vicious blood match. I've already gotten into a slap fight on Twitter with an Impact fan. Gore is in the air, or is that Nevio Pizzolitto spitting on someone?

What's not to hate about the Montreal Impact? There's the way they blatantly threw a 2009 Voyageurs Cup game against Toronto FC to deny the Whitecaps their rightful Canadian crown. There's the way they beat us in the 2009 USL-1 final thanks to the most infamous refereeing performance in the long, abysmal history of Dave Gantar. There's the way they idolize villains like Adam Braz, who never met an ankle he didn't like breaking and once threatened a passing Whitecaps staffer on his way off Swangard Stadium's hallowed grass. The Montreal Impact are bastards and there's not much in soccer I can hope for more than Martin Rennie and the Whitecaps dismembering them on their MLS debut, sending their catatonic fans filing out of BC Place too numb to even riot.

It's wonderful.