MEXICO CITY – Shooting for away goals? Nah, not exactly.
The Montreal Impact have needed those goals on the road in this CONCACAF Champions League season. Two tallies in both Pachuca and Alajuela got the Impact through the quarters and the semis, leading them to a packed Estadio Azteca and the first leg of the CCL final, this Wednesday.
Away goals are the currency Montreal splashed out on for this final. But Montreal are not thinking of away goals. They’re thinking of goals, period. They’re thinking of playing and enjoying their game. Thinking of winning.
“I don’t think [away goals are] something that we concentrate too much on,” Nigel Reo-Coker told reporters on Monday. “No two games are alike. This is the first leg. We have to be patient. We’re away from home. They’re a very good team. They’re a possession-orientated team. They’ll keep the ball well. We have a job to do. We have to make sure that we keep our shape.
“It’s just an individual game for us,” Reo-Coker continued. “We’re going to go out there to win. We’re not going to come here to sit and look for away goals and concentrate on that. We’re just going to concentrate on winning the football match.”
As expected, the Impact are banking on América to leave spaces behind to exploit upon recovery of the ball. They have succeeded in doing so in this current CCL run, but Azteca will prove to be an altogether different test.
But like Reo-Coker in England, team captain Patrice Bernier has experience dealing with hostile atmostpheres – with the Canada national team in his case. The veterans will try and keep the group calm and collected to exploit those spaces in the search for a win – or, at the very least, an away goal.
“There will be possibilities on the counter, like we’ve done in the last few games,” Bernier said. “I’m especially thinking of Pachuca, where we knew that the Mexican teams want to have the ball. They leave some space, so if you go out there and get a good result – a win, or at least a goal that can give us an advantage at home, with the last leg at home –, then we can take advantage of that and finish it off at home.”
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