MONTREAL – In all competitions, Montreal have conceded 20 goals in 12 games; 17 have come in second halves.
Once again, the Impact’s second half sank them. The Portland Timbers contributed two goals to this statistic on Saturday, defeating the Impact 2-1 at Stade Saputo through Nat Borchers and the returning Diego Valeri.
Montreal have dropped points in the first of three straight games at home and remain bottom of the Eastern Conference. They still have many games in hand on the rest of the Conference, but if they are to capitalize on those, concerted efforts will be needed.
“We haven't had many good second halves yet, so far. We need to sort this out,” Nigel Reo-Coker told reporters postgame. “We need to play as a team. Football’s a team game. It’s not one individual that’s going to do it all by himself. We need to really realize that it’s a team effort and we need to play as a team, show that now.”
Still winless in the league, Montreal are in need of solutions. At halftime, head coach Frank Klopas said the idea was to move the ball quicker, take advantage of the Timbers getting stretched in transition and taking risks at the right moment. His team, he thought, got themselves into too many situations where they would dribble for too long and get tired.
But once you concede two back-to-back goals, Klopas offered, “all your plans change.”
“We need to play better,” the Montreal boss said. “We have to push the games, and there’s got to be more accountability. At the end of the day, the accountability’s on me – I’m the head coach, I make the decisions – but I need to see a lot more from my players. I need to see a lot more.”
Second halves are tough, but maybe better first halves would trigger a domino effect, as well. Goalkeeper Evan Bush argued that not putting away chances in the first half puts pressure on a team to be “perfect in everything you do,” especially at home.
Reo-Coker, for his part, praised Portland for being more “aggressive” and more “positive” than the Impact. Bush put it more bluntly.
“It was poor. It’s unacceptable when you’re at home,” Bush said. “It was a hot and humid day for sure, in the first half, so maybe guys were tired, but at the same time, the other team’s playing in the same conditions. So it’s no excuse for us. We have to figure out a way to come out a lot stronger.”
