Seventh Heaven A Bridge Too Far

There was no seventh heaven for CF Montreal last night at Red Bull Arena. Aiming to extend their unprecedented unbeaten streak to seven they came up short against a New York City side that ended a two-game skid.

The game’s decisive moment came in the 29th minute when home goalkeeper Barazza’s long clearance wasn’t dealt with by Bassong allowing Ismail Tajouri-Shradi to lob over Pantemis, stranded in no-man’s-land, and into the unguarded net.

Nightmare defending in keeping with the win over Cincinnati for the Montrealers.

Montreal almost claimed first-blood when Johnsen masked a tenth minute volley off the crossbar with Barazza beaten.

It was not a lucky night for the lanky Norwegian. He thought he’d equalized a couple of minutes after the break after running onto to Ibrahim’s pass and outstripping the home defence before a confident and consummate finish past the exposed Barazza. But the assistant ref’s flag went up, rightly so, and New York City maintain their lead.

Libyan international Tajouri-Shradi almost doubled the advantage with a 15-yard shot which rattled the same crossbar a Johnsen did in the first-half. But despite several attack-mined substitutions by Wilfried Nancy to try salvage at least a point, there was no further scoring.
Montreal now drop to 5th in the East, NYCFC remain in 7th, just above the play-off line.

It’s on to Foxboro on Sunday now for Montreal to face Eastern Conference table-toppers New England Revolution, while New York City FC welcome Orlando City, this time to their Bronx home at Yankee Stadium the same day.

Line-ups -

NYCFC - Barazza - Tinnerholm, Chanot, Callens, Thorarinson (M Amundsen, 83)- Acevedo (Parks, 72), Morales - Tajouri-Shradi (Ibeagha, 90+2), Moralez - Castellanos (Thiago, 83)

Coach - Ronnie Deila

CF Montreal - Pantemis - Waterman, Camacho, Bassong (Choiniere, 80) - Brault-Guillard, Wanyama, Hamdy, Kizza (Lappalainen, 71) - Torres (Mihailovic, 60) - Johnsen, Ibrahim (Toye, 71)

Coach - Wilfried Nancy

Match Officials -
Referee: Ted Unkel
Asst Refs: Adam Wienckowski, Ryan Graves
4th Official: Joshua Encarnación
VAR: José Carlos Rivero
Asst VAR: Thomas Supple

Attendance: 2,873