MONTREAL – The Montreal Impact U23 team was held to a 1-1 draw by the Westchester Flames on the synthetic field at Stade Saputo on Sunday afternoon.
It took the Impact just two minutes to open the scoring when Anthony Jackson-Hamel got on the end of a through ball and calmly placed his shot past Westchester goalkeeper Thomas Spenser.
The visitors got the equalizer in the 23rd minute. Following a free kick from the left side, midfielder Daniel Taylor got on the end of a bouncing ball in the box and found the back of the net.
Montreal was inches away from getting the winner in the 79th minute. Jackson-Hamel controlled a ball at the top the box, spun around a defender, only to curl a shot off the crossbar.
“We were missing the first 45 minutes, as we only really played one half,” said U23 head coach Philippe Eullaffroy. “We cannot win soccer games by only playing well for one half. We only have ourselves to blame. We didn’t play well for the first 45 minutes. If we did, we would have easily won.”
“Games like this are always disappointing,” said midfielder Jérémy Gagnon-Laparé. “Everyone felt like we had the advantage with all the chances we had. There’s no reason that we shouldn’t have left this game with anything but a win. It could have easily finished 3-1 or 4-1.”
Lineups
Impact: GK – Luca Leone; D – Kevin Lafond, Amine Meftouh, Chakib Hocine, Jems Geffrard (81st Franck Zoue); M -Jérémy Gagnon-Laparé (78th Chris-Michel Rumuri), Nazim Belguendouz (78th Louis Béland-Goyette), Victor Ndiaye, Frédéric Lajoie-Gravelle (59th Emad Houache); F - Anthony Jackson-Hamel, Charles Joly (69th Philippe Lincourt-Joseph)
Westchester: GK – Thomas Spenser; D – Mark Kramarchuk, Salvatore Borea, Thomas Manz, Luke Salmon; M – Abraham Bartoah, Alan Reiter, Daniel Taylor, Ryan Williams; F – Lucas Mcbride (62nd Alexandros Kiourkenidis), Rilwan Salawu
Goals
MTL – Anthony Jackson-Hamel 2’
WES – Daniel Taylor 23’
Cautions
MTL – Jérémy Gagnon-Laparé 43’
WES – Ryan Williams 48’
WES – Thomas Manz 64’
MTL – Victor Ndiaye 84’
WES - Rilwan Salawu 90’
