Harambee Stars captain Victor Wanyama made his anticipated Major League Soccer (MLS) debut when Montreal Impact fell 1-0 to New England Revolution on Thursday.
A Gustavo Bou goal was enough to see Thierry Henry's Impact suffer a loss in the first match of the 'MLS is Back' tournament, and the former Arsenal striker said the tie was not won by tactics while calling for improvement from his players.
“Time will tell,” Henry said after the match with regard to whether they are ready for the upcoming fixtures.
“A lot of teams came with different schedules in terms of preparation. You just have to adapt to whatever comes our way. When we play, we're going to try and be ready, and in a better way than we were.
“If you don't fight and you don't win battles, and you lose balls, there is no need even to talk about tactics. There was nothing to do about tactics today [Thursday night]. It was about desire that we didn't have that, and it can happen.
“I'm not questioning the desire of my players but it wasn't there.
“We didn't know where we were going to be physically, but that's not an excuse.”
The Frenchman went ahead and said there was no urgency to fight from his side when compared to the previous ties.
“There's one thing that always I've been talking to the team and talk about before this game is that we do fight, and you saw that before at the beginning of the season,” he added.
“And then at the beginning of this [tournament] again, that didn't happen. This is not an attack against anyone but that didn't happen tonight.
“I'm not saying it won't happen again.”
Henry also accepted the defeat and acknowledged their opponents deserved the slim win more than his side.
“You have to be honest, give credit to New England,” the Arsenal great continued.
“We beat them once and they beat us [on Thursday]. They wanted it more than us. We made too many mistakes under no pressure, individually and as a team.”
Impact are ninth on the MLS table while the win moved New England to the seventh position.
