MONTREAL — CF Montreal's offensive struggles once again shone bright, continuing the club’s worst-ever start to a Major League Soccer season as it fell 1-0 to D.C. United in the first game at Stade Saputo on Saturday night.
Lewis O'Brien scored the lone goal for United (2-4-2), giving them their first win since opening day. Montreal (1-6-0) has now gone 270 minutes without scoring a goal.
“I don’t know what combinations we need to bring to create goals, but we need to find more ways to create offence,” said head coach Hernan Losada. “We have new players and more coming back from injury, but without Romell (Quioto), there’s a noticeable gap.”
Quioto has been the top scorer in each of the last three seasons with Montreal — the entirety of his tenure with the club. The Honduran international also has two of the team’s three goals this season, but missed the game because of a leg injury sustained against the New England Revolution last week.
Both teams lined up in relatively defensive formations and gave very little space in their own end to start the match. After the 20-minute mark, Montreal began asserting themselves and playing higher up the pitch.
In the 39th minute, Chinonso Offor had a golden opportunity to open the scoring, but was brought down in the box. No penalty was called as it was deemed there was not enough contact to warrant a spot kick.
However, it took only 15 seconds of second-half action for that momentum to be undone. Immediately after kickoff, a long ball was sent to Christian Benteke who laid it off for Mateusz Klich. His shot from just outside the box rang off the inside of the post and bounced into the path of O'Brien who managed to squeeze the ball past a slew of diving Montreal players.
This is now the fourth consecutive game where Montreal has conceded within five minutes of the restart.
“We try (after halftime) and come out like we do in the beginning of the game with the right mindset,” said defender Joel Waterman. “We knew what they were going to do, it’s the only thing they got, and they got us on it. That’s unacceptable and there’s no excuses for it.”
With the lead secured, D.C. dropped into a more defensive low block, stifling Montreal attacks before they could even get started.
A lot of the attack was then based on long balls to Offor, the lone striker whose large frame was then used to hold up the play and create space. Montreal’s style of play attempts to hold the ball and build vertically, but the midfield found themselves completely taken out of the game on a number of occasions.
“We adjusted the shape and matched Montreal up, which I feel caused them a lot of problems,” said D.C. head coach Wayne Rooney. “Playing against a team with wing backs is tricky so we wanted to match that and keep the game in the middle of the park. (Montreal) gambled and really went for it, but I find we adapted very well.”
Around the 70th minute, Montreal switched from its usual five-back formation to a more conventional four-defender setup and found much more success. However, they could not convert that pressure into an equalizer, having still scored just three goals this season.
“When you a play a team that is so powerful in the air, you try and create spaces out wide and try to open up the field,” said Losada. “We created a few opportunities at the end, but there’s not much else to do.”
The game also saw the debuts of newly acquired players Bryce Duke and Ariel Lassiter, who were brought in during a trade with Inter Miami this week.
Montreal will now direct its attention toward the Canadian Championship as the squad will host Vaughan Azzurri on April 18, while United heads to Exploria Stadium to face Orlando City on April 22.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 15, 2023.
Elias Grigoriadis, The Canadian Press
