CF Montreal suffers third straight shutout in loss to DC United
CF Montreal’s offensive struggles as soon as once more shone vibrant, persevering with the membership’s worst-ever begin to a Major League Soccer season because it fell 1-0 to D.C. United within the first sport at Stade Saputo on Saturday evening.
Lewis O’Brien scored the lone purpose for United (2-4-2), giving them their first win since opening day. Montreal (1-6-0) has now gone 270 minutes with out scoring a purpose.
“I don’t know what combinations we need to bring to create goals, but we need to find more ways to create offence,” stated 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 highest scorer in every of the final three seasons with Montreal — everything of his tenure with the membership. The Honduran worldwide additionally has two of the group’s three targets this season, however missed the sport due to a leg harm sustained towards the New England Revolution final week.
Both groups lined up in comparatively defensive formations and gave little or no area in their very own finish to begin the match. After the 20-minute mark, Montreal started asserting themselves and taking part in larger up the pitch.
In the thirty ninth minute, Chinonso Offor had a golden alternative to open the scoring, however was introduced down within the field. No penalty was referred to as because it was deemed there was not sufficient contact to warrant a spot kick.
However, it took solely 15 seconds of second-half motion for that momentum to be undone. Immediately after kickoff, an extended ball was despatched to Christian Benteke who laid it off for Mateusz Klich. His shot from simply outdoors the field rang off the within of the submit and bounced into the trail of O’Brien who managed to squeeze the ball previous a slew of diving Montreal gamers.
This is now the fourth consecutive sport the place Montreal has conceded inside 5 minutes of the restart.
“We try (after halftime) and come out like we do in the beginning of the game with the right mindset,” stated 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 right into a extra defensive low block, stifling Montreal assaults earlier than they might even get began.
A whole lot of the assault was then based mostly on lengthy balls to Offor, the lone striker whose giant body was then used to carry up the play and create area. Montreal’s type of play makes an attempt to carry the ball and construct vertically, however the midfield discovered themselves utterly taken out of the sport on quite a few events.
“We adjusted the shape and matched Montreal up, which I feel caused them a lot of problems,” stated 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 seventieth minute, Montreal switched from its standard five-back formation to a extra typical four-defender setup and located far more success. However, they might not convert that strain into an equalizer, having nonetheless scored simply three targets 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,” stated Losada. “We created a few opportunities at the end, but there’s not much else to do.”
The sport additionally noticed the debuts of newly acquired gamers Bryce Duke and Ariel Lassiter, who had been introduced in throughout a commerce with Inter Miami this week.
Montreal will now direct its consideration towards the Canadian Championship because the squad will host Vaughan Azzurri on April 18, whereas United heads to Exploria Stadium to face Orlando City on April 22.
