MONTREAL – The Montreal Impact announced on Friday that the club will now be associated with Ottawa Fury FC (USL). With this new partnership with Ottawa, the Impact will keep developing its best young players in a professional environment in North America, while allowing the club to strengthen its presence in the Outaouais region. FC Montreal will not be back in 2017.
The club now intends to sign players from the U18 group to professional contracts in order to integrate them faster with the first team.
The Impact will also continue its collaboration with Bologna FC, which allows the best young Impact players to train regularly in Italy in key moments of their development. The club has already benefited from this initiative with players like Ballou Jean-Yves Tabla and Maxime Crépeau, who signed contracts with the first team, as well as Thomas Meilleur-Giguère and Marco Dominguez.
The remaining structure of the Montreal Impact Academy and Pre-Academy is unchanged and will be composed of nine youth teams from U8 to U18.
Ten MLS clubs, such as FC Dallas and the Colorado Rapids, are now affiliated with USL clubs.
