Rough go of it for Canadian MLS teams this weekend
Photo credit: Abdallah Hussein
All three MLS Canadian teams took the pitch in Week 8 of the MLS regular season and the results were, well, beyond disastrous.
The Vancouver Whitecaps got absolutely embarrassed Friday night, falling 6-0 at Sporting Kansas City. On Saturday afternoon, the Montreal Impact suffered a thorough 5-3 home thrashing at the hands of LAFC. And not to be outdone, defending-champion Toronto FC fell 5-1 at the Houston Dynamo.
Talk about hemorrhaging goals, that’s 16 total tallies conceded amongst them on the weekend. Oof.
Of the three debacles, only Toronto FC had something slightly resembling a legitimate excuse. TFC is awaiting the all-important second leg of the CONCACAF Champions League final, where it’ll have to overcome a 2-1 aggregate deficit at Chivas on Wednesday after allowing two road goals to the Liga MX side in Toronto last week. It was already confirmed that TFC wouldn’t feature anything close to its best XI Saturday with the second leg looming. Still, it’s highly doubtful head coach Greg Vanney was thrilled with the performance of his reserve-heavy side in Houston.
As for Vancouver and Montreal, did they earn a free pass for their downright dreadful defensive showings via the world-renowned red card excuse? Hardly.
The Whitecaps had two players sent off, yes, but they were already down 3-nil in the first half by the time reds were issued to Yordy Reyna and Efrain Juarez. Red cards, shmed cards. They should consider sending a thank you letter to Sporting KC for only putting in three more with a two-man advantage for more than half the match.
Vancouver came out wholly unprepared and uninspired, got run off the pitch early, then succumbed to frustration which led to the send-offs. There wasn’t a shred of an excuse to be found anywhere in the performance.
Montreal could maybe make a stronger case for use the red card excuse to justify its trouncing. Nah. Impact defender Victor Cabrera had no one to blame but himself. Sitting on a 2-1 lead after two early strikes by Nacho Piatti, Montreal seemed to have things relatively under control. But LAFC forward Marco Ureña got in behind the defense and was firmly pulled down from behind by Cabrera as he was preparing to shoot.
It was a clear and obvious denial of a goal-scoring opportunity and Cabrera was rightly told to hit the showers even before the video review. VAR upheld what had been blatantly obvious to begin with, and things only went downhill from here. Evan Bush actually saved Ureña’s ensuing penalty to preserve the 2-1 scoreline a bit longer and Piatti even added a third goal for the hosts, but it mattered little in the end. Down a man, Montreal essentially rolled out the red carpet, ceding gobs of space for LAFC to run rampant. Four unanswered goals later, the Impact found themselves on the wrong end of a disheartening 5-3 home loss.
What’s the good news for the three MLS Canadian teams? Vancouver has a decent chunk of home matches coming up. Toronto, meanwhile, figures to quickly ascend the Eastern Conference table once the CCL finishes up. And Montreal, following a tough road assignment next Saturday at Atlanta, will host three of its next four at home.
So, life ain’t all bad going forward for the Canada-based MLS franchises, but it sure as hell was this weekend.
Follow Kevin on Twitter: @KJboxing.
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