PACHUCA, Mexico – There was a moment, during a Montreal Impact half-field scrimmage at Pachuca’s Estadio Hidalgo, when everyone realized that Ignacio Piatti was ready for the season.
Picking up a pass near his own goal, Piatti lobbed his marker with his first touch. He ran onto the ball, managed to control it despite a bounce off a defender and lifted it past another opponent. Thrown off by the goalkeeper advancing toward him, Piatti turned sideways, stepped onto the ball, rolled it behind him, turned back to face the goalmouth and blasted a left-footed drive into the opposite top corner of the net.
Early during training camp, Impact head coach Frank Klopas said Piatti “may” play in the second leg of the CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinals (Tuesday, 8 pm ET, FOX Sports 2, Galavision); Piatti had undergone surgery last November for tendinitis in his left knee. Any nagging doubts about his health were put to rest on the Hidalgo grass.
As Montreal’s only Designated Player following Marco Di Vaio’s retirement, Piatti shoulders massive responsibilities. The expectations were high last year, and so they remain this year.
“I showed how I could play last season,” Piatti told MLSsoccer.com last week, hours before his impressive goal in training. “I’ll try to do the same, for the team. After the injury, I couldn’t play, but this year, hopefully, I’ll play every game, score goals and help the team get as far as it can.”
So far, so good. Piatti did play 90 the following night, as Montreal and Pachuca fought to a 2-2 draw. That had to relieve the Montreal supporters just as much as the result did.
He displayed some of the moves that Montreal fans yearned for late on last season, when the stakes had dropped but there was still a Nacho Piatti to discover. Their new DP took MLS by storm, scoring four goals and providing one assist in his first six league games.
But the tendinitis became too much to bear by Sept. 20. With Piatti down, San Jose’s Pablo Pintos signaled to the Impact bench. It was the last we saw of Piatti that season.
“I did everything I could to play those last games,” Piatti said. “I came to play. I wanted to play Marco’s last game. But I would have played 35, 45 minutes, and I would have had to come off because of the tendinitis. But I was still in the locker room, with the team, cheering them on. Now, thanks to God, I’m fine.”
He did not miss a beat during preseason, thanks also to his “great doctor in Argentina,” and he looks set to pick up where he left off in MLS – once he had finally made his debut.
Montreal signed Piatti last year on July 2, but they had to wait. They let Piatti finish his Copa Libertadores duties with San Lorenzo, which had been a major factor in the club landing Piatti in the first place. In the end, transfer regulations prevented Piatti from playing the second leg of the Libertadores final, though San Lorenzo did defeat Nacional of Paraguay, 2-1 on aggregate.
“Montreal were after me two years ago,” Piatti said. “I said no because I wanted to play the Libertadores. The following year, while I was playing the Libertadores, they came back. The president [Joey Saputo] told me I could play the remaining games in the tournament, the semifinals and the final. It really pleased me. Those games were important. When I got to Montreal, I was really happy as well. I got to play with Marco Di Vaio, Matteo Ferrari, Andres Romero; I got a really warm welcome.”
He got a heck of a sendoff from the San Lorenzo fans as well. A significant contributor to their winning Libertadores campaign, Piatti was a star to fans of El Ciclón, the last in a long list of clubs he plied his trade for before joining MLS.
It all started in his village of General Baldissera, in the central Argentinian province of Córdoba, where he was born on Feb. 4, 1985. There, he played every day with his friends, always in an attacking role.
“I started playing for a club from where I lived, it was called Mitre de General Baldissera,” Piatti said. “I started playing there as a kid. Then, there was what they called a Mundialito, where clubs from all over Argentina played, including one called Talleres, from Córdoba. They saw me, and I went for a trial there. I was 14. I stayed there two months, after which I went to Newell’s in Rosario, for a year.”
Piatti would then travel to Rome, Italy, in 2002; his boyhood idol, Gabriel Batistuta, had arranged for him to trial at Roma. The following year, Piatti went to Turkey’s Galatasaray. The year after that, he went to Nice, in France. Always trying out for a chance to live a dream.
“After Nice, I was 18, and when they told me I wouldn’t be staying, I went for a trial at [Argentine club] Chacarita,” Piatti said. “I told myself that I would try out, and if it didn’t work out, I’d go back to my village. I tried out for Chacarita. They were in the second division then. I stayed there, playing for their fourth-division team, and after six months, I joined the first team. That’s how my career started.”
Piatti then spent 2006 with Saint-Étienne in France, where his adaptation, he admits, was difficult. Used to dribbling more often than not, Piatti soon realized that, in France, “it was all one-touch, two-touch.”
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Limited to one Ligue 1 game during his stay, Piatti returned to Argentina, with Gimnasia La Plata. There, he played against his club of choice as a kid, Boca Juniors, for the first time. The emotions weren’t overwhelming.
“I’d already been at Chacarita, who played in the second division and thus didn’t play against Boca, and in France. When I played against Boca, it was nice, the stadium was great, but I wasn’t supporting Boca anymore,” Piatti said. “I was a supporter of the club I played for.”
Piatti then supported Lecce, in Italy, where he played under four coaches in two years. After the second season, when he sat on the bench most of the time, Piatti again went back to Argentina. With San Lorenzo, he won the Torneo Inicial in 2013 and, most importantly, the right to play the 2014 Copa Libertadores.
That Libertadores win was San Lorenzo's first. Montreal are aiming for their first CCL win. If they are to make a run for it, they’ll need many things, one of which is Piatti working his magic. The kind of magic he displayed in training at the Hidalgo.
