A Major League Soccer player almost booked his ticket to the Club World Cup this weekend.
Unfortunately for Montreal Impact midfielder Ignacio Piatti, however, a unique deal that would have sent him to Argentine club San Lorenzo on a short-term loan fell through because of the FIFA rule forbidding a player to be on the roster of two teams at once.
Piatti officially joined the Impact as a Designated Player in August from San Lorenzo after the team won the Copa Libertadores tournament and clinched a spot in the FIFA Club World Cup in December. Piatti later repeatedly expressed interest in a short-term return to San Lorenzo to play in the tournament, and in a postgame interview with ESPN in August he speculated that “maybe something can happen for me to be able to play over there.”
According to a club source, both the Impact and San Lorenzo wanted to make the deal happen - San Lorenzo to get a talented player on the field and the Impact to get international exposure at the Club World Cup – and the two teams tried to get it done before the registration window in Argentina closed on Sunday evening. The discussed deal would have let Piatti finish the MLS season and the CONCACAF Champions League group stage and take a few weeks to recover from the season and overcome lingering tendonitis issues before joining San Lorenzo for the tournament.
Montreal and Piatti wanting to end the MLS season together was, however, the deal breaker. Piatti joining San Lorenzo on loan at this time would have prevented him from playing the remaining fixtures of their MLS and CONCACAF Champions League season, because Article 5 of FIFA’s Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players states that “[a] player may only be registered with one club at a time.”
The arrangement between Montreal and San Lorenzo would have expired immediately following the Club World Cup, and Piatti was expected to return to Montreal for preseason in January.
Piatti has scored four goals and added one assist in six league appearances for the Impact this season, but tendonitis has forced him out of the team’s past two games. His last start came on Sept. 20.
