It’s a soccer cliché that a short-handed coach will say he would have accepted a point in advance on the road, but that platitude pales into insignificance when the team has just gone 2-0 down after only 28 minutes. Adrian Heath was ready to hope for just 2-0 from their visit to Montreal.
But then his Orlando City SC team hit a rich vein of Brazilian form in the space of just one minute and 22 seconds, with goals from Pedro Ribeiro and Kaká, and the Lions were able to escape Olympic Stadium with a precious point, leaving their head coach to marvel at the dramatic turnaround.
“At 2-0 down, you fear the worst,” Heath admitted. “But we got a goal back at a vital time and I think the character of our players really showed. They kept believing and they got their rewards in the end."
“And, once we got it back to 2-2, I thought we might go on and win it, but I’ll certainly take a point.”
Former Ballon d'Or winner Kaká showed why he is one of the league’s most high-profile Designated Players with the assist on Ribeiro’s goal that made it 2-1 after 29 minutes. Ribeiro then returned the favor with a lay-off that the ex-Real Madrid and AC Milan star delightfully turned into the top corner little more than a minute later.
“The one thing that everybody hopes who brings in a Designated Player is that it makes a difference,” Heath explained. “Ricky [Kaká] definitely made the difference for us tonight. He had a huge influence on the game and I think he will have that kind of impact every time he plays."
“He is also a great influence on the players around him, players like Pedro [Ribeiro] who grew up idolizing him, and you could see the positive effect it had on him today. If we had been playing on grass, Pedro would have covered every blade of it today.”
The Lions coach was also delighted that his depleted squad—minus 11 players either with injury or on international duty—was able to adapt to an unusual 3-4-3 formation that made the most of the team’s experienced players, and asked a lot of the younger ones
“We started a bit hesitantly, which was understandable with the new system,” Heath added. “We were asking a lot of them because we decided to go with as many of the experienced players as we could and it’s as much about convincing them that it can work as anything else."
The MLS newcomers can also look back at two professional performances from their two road games to date, with a 1-0 win at Houston and now the hard fought draw at Montreal.
“We have taken four points from two very difficult places,” Heath insisted. “Houston won’t lose many at home and Montreal have shown with their performances in the CONCACAF Champions League games that they are no pushover here, so I am very pleased with things so far.”
