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Unbeaten Failures - The Strange 2019 Series of Steeven Saba’s Violette SC

How a team went through a championship unbeaten, yet still missed the Play-offs...

Haiti v Mexico: Semifinals - 2019 CONCACAF Gold Cup
Impact’s new signing Steeven Saba knows a thing to two about play for draw specialists...
Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images

If your team was involved in a 15-game championship and completed its schedule unbeaten, you’d be delighted. Right?

Well, not necessarily... That certainly wasn’t the case for the fans of Port-au-Prince based Violette AC, the club from which Steeven Saba arrives as Montreal Impact’s latest acquisition.

During the 2019 Serie d’Ouverture (Haiti, like many Central and South American countries have an opening season and a closing one) Violette won their league matches in both the 3rd and 14th rounds of games. In every other round they played to a stalemate, each game ending either deadlocked at 1-1 or scoreless. They played out no fewer than 5 scoreless draws and during one stretch of ten consecutive drawn games, five in succession ended 1-1.

Violette could manage only a ninth spot finish outside the play-off positions. Tempete whom they defeated in their penultimate game, suffered five defeats in the campaign to Violette’s zero, yet finished with five points more in 4th position.

Steeven Saba is in the perfect position to let his new mates know that remaining unbeaten doesn’t win prizes. Points (and wins) absolutely do!!!

The final Serie d’Ouverture table, showing Saba’s unbeaten Violette AC in 9th position.