NASHVILLE, Tennessee - CF Montréal fell 4-1 to Nashville SC on Saturday evening at GEODIS Park.
Nashville opened the scoring in the 12th minute with a Sam Surridge strike. Walker Zimmerman then gave the hosts a 2-0 lead in the 21st minute.
Surridge scored a second goal early in the second half to make it 3-0 in Nashville's favour.
Montreal broke the ice in the 65th minute when Zimmerman redirected a Raheem Edwards shot into his own net.
Surridge completed his hat trick in the 82nd minute to give Nashville a 4-1 lead.
CF Montréal will play on May 7 at 11:00am the first leg of the TELUS Canadian Championship quarterfinals against Forge FC in Hamilton before hosting Inter Miami CF at Stade Saputo on May 11.
COMPLETE SUMMARY HERE
MATCH NOTES:
-Raheem Edwards earned his 100th MLS start.
-George Campbell earned his 50th MLS start.
-CF Montréal has played in front of over 10 million fans during the regular season since its inception in 1993. In 898 regular-season games, the Club has played in front of 10,000,465 fans.
LAURENT COURTOIS
“It was a good lesson for us and for me. Last week, I thought the defending in the box was impressive, but this time it was poorer. It's somewhat a reflection of a lot of things for us. We can be either brilliant or mediocre, and collectively it's not consistent. We can't keep showing such wide disparities in our individual and collective performances.”
SAMUEL PIETTE
“I'm not worried. There are a lot of things we need to correct with tonight's game, but we've played 10 games, a lot of them on the road. We've had some bad games, like tonight and in Seattle. Tonight, there were a lot of little things that went wrong for us and we paid for them dearly, but it's not all bad. It's a good reality check for us, I think. It's a bit of a mixed bag, and we need to find the right balance. We're going to analyze all this and we're going to have to bounce back.”
RAHEEM EDWARDS
“To lose 4-1 is difficult, to lose 5-0 obviously in Seattle is difficult, but I think the main concern for me is how do we stop the bleeding. When it's 2-0, I said at half-time, it's important for us to get the next goal and after we conceded one minute into the second half. Let's clean it up and let’s not try to be too naive. Obviously, when we're down we want to push but to be in a smart way. It is kind of concerning but for me, our next step is that if we do concede early, how do we stop the bleeding and how do we get back into playing the football that we did in the last 15-20 minutes of the second half.”
