VANCOUVER, British-Columbia – In its first all-Canadian clash of the season, CF Montréal fell 2-0 to Vancouver Whitecaps FC at BC Place on Saturday night.
Vancouver opened the scoring in the 32nd minute with a goal from Mathias Laborda following a corner kick. In the second half, Tate Johnson then doubled his team’s lead in the 49th minute.
Goalkeeper Jonathan Sirois made a third consecutive five-save performance. The Quebecer is the MLS leader in saves with 15.
CF Montréal will play its fourth game of the season on Saturday, March 15 at Audi Field against D.C. United at 7:30pm EDT (MLS Season Pass, BPM Sports, CJAD 800).
GAME SUMMARY HERE
GAME NOTES:
-Brandan Craig and Aleksandr Guboglo earned their first starts with CF Montréal and in MLS.
-Guboglo became the youngest CF Montréal Academy homegrown player in the Club's history (17 years, 353 days) to earn an MLS start. He is also the 19th player from the Club's Academy to earn a start.
-Prince Owusu and Luca Petrasso played their 40th MLS game.
-Mahal Opoku played his 90th MLS game. Opoku also played his 30th game with CF Montréal and earned his 20th start for the Club.
Post-match comments from head coach Laurent Courtois, Joel Waterman and Caden Clark are available HERE.
LAURENT COURTOIS
“There is a little bit of disappointment. Our team is waiting to be punched to react. On the ball, there are clear actions that we thought were going to put us in a good position and we hesitated to execute. The second that we did execute, we were in a good position. I’m just frustrated with the guys who waited. They either waited to react or waited for the second half. You should be like this from minute one. Aleksandr Guboglo had an impressive start for a 17-year-old. He was tracking his one-twos, making runs in behind, trying to take players on one-on-one and, in recovering, not getting caught on his back.”
JOEL WATERMAN
“Our game needs to stay the same no matter where we are. Football is the same, it's 11v11, no matter where we are. Coach wants us to play our type of football, because we have the players to do so, and I think we're hesitating right now. Like (Laurent Courtois) said, it comes down to that commitment and I think hesitation is just a little bit within our game, which is a tough pill to swallow, but I think we just need to commit. I think we're in a type of place right now where we're just hesitating on the ball and what we want to do, and maybe those spaces aren't opening up the way we want to. I think it's just about commitment and just making sure that we're playing with the utmost confidence that we know we can because every guy in a locker room deserves to play and every guy in the locker room has the confidence to do what we want to do and execute what we want to do.”
CADEN CLARK
“I think that we're too staggered sometimes, and it has to come from the players to understand where to be and when to be in that space. Being on the road shouldn't be an excuse, half of your season is on the road. You can't have half of your games where you're not playing your style. We have to figure out a formula and a way to push forward. We created a couple of really big chances in the last 20 minutes, and there were a couple in the first 70 minutes. We just got to be better, finish those off and tidy up defensively.”