MONTREAL — CF Montréal's offensive rebuild continued Tuesday with the addition of Venezuelan striker Josef Martinez.
The Major League Soccer club announced it has signed the prolific goal scorer to a one-year deal, including an option, using targeted allocation money.
The 30-year-old Martinez has 105 career goals, ninth most in league history, over 161 MLS games with Atlanta United and Inter Miami.
He is one of 13 players to have scored at least 100 MLS goals, and became the fastest player to achieve the feat in just 125 games.
His 90th-minute goal in a 2-2 draw with Columbus on July
He was MLS's most valuable player in 2018, when he had 31 goals in 34 regular-season games with Atlanta and scored the winning goal of the MLS Cup.
While he was limited to seven goals in 27 MLS games last season with Miami, no Montreal player had more than six in all competitions in 2023.
He added three goals and two assists in seven games as Miami won the inaugural Leagues Cup and two goals in six US Open Cup games.
Internationally, Martinez has 14 goals in 66 appearances with Venezuela.
Martinez joins Uruguayan striker Matias Coccaro and Bulgarian-Canadian attacking midfielder Dominic Iankov as off-season additions tasked with injecting life into a Montreal office that stalled last season.
Montreal's 36 MLS goals were tied for fourth fewest in the league, with the inability to finish costing them a playoff spot last season. The club claimed just six of 27 available points in its last nine games and finished in 10th place in the Eastern Conference, two points out of the playoffs, following a season-ending 2-1 loss at Columbus.
Montreal was either shut out or held to a goal in eight of its last 10 games.
The late-season collapse led to the firing of head coach Hernan Losada after just one season. Laurent Courtois, who led one of the top offences in the MLS Next Pro developmental league with Columbus Crew 2, was hired as Losada's replacement on Jan. 8.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 6, 2024.
The Canadian Press
