It wasn’t as dramatic, but eliminating Toronto FC brought back memories of March 3 at the Olympic Stadium.
Down 3-2 on aggregate at BMO Field with the clock ticking, the Montreal Impact played a combination down the right that released full back Eric Miller. His pinpoint cross met Dominic Oduro, who’d risen above TFC defender Damien Perquis. Oduro wasn’t getting many chances, but this one wasn’t slipping away.
This wasn’t in stoppage time, like that Cameron Porter goal, but minute 84 is still fine timing to qualify for the Amway Canadian Championship final on away goals, losing 3-2 in the game but advancing on a 3-3 aggregate score.
“During the whole time, I wasn't getting the ball, so I was just looking for movement,” Oduro told Sportsnet after the game. “We do this at practice all the time. Eric had it. I was inside the box, check in, check out. That was a great ball by him. I just saw the net wide open, and I hit the ball in.”
Montreal saved themselves from yet another bumpy second half. The opening 45 minutes weren’t perfect. But after Kenny Cooper scored midway through on a set play, they shut the door.
It crumbled 10 minutes into the second half. Benoît Cheyrou and Sebastian Giovinco scored two minutes apart as Maxim Tissot was attended to on the sideline after hitting his head on advertising boards – though TFC’s man advantage really shouldn’t serve as an excuse: Montreal have now conceded 17 second-half goals (23 in total) in 13 games in all competitions.
“We made some plays, and it’s a little risky, because they have a lot of quality in the final third, but we scored that second goal that we needed,” head coach Frank Klopas told reporters. “Then, we could have handled the end of the game a little bit better, but it was good to move on to the final of the Canadian Cup. It’s a good rivalry. It's good for us to go through. We needed something positive, for sure.”
Patrice Bernier had challenged his teammates on Tuesday morning. He got a response and praised the team’s character in the end.
“We kept fighting,” Bernier told Sportsnet. “We kept hustling. It’s typical us this year. It seems like we play one half, and the second half, we fall asleep. We pay for it. But we hustled. We knew that there was only one goal that we needed to score to get the result, and guys pushed through. We got the goal, and now we’re going to the final again.”
Tissot is “okay right now,” said Klopas. As for Cooper, who collided with Cheyrou and left the game shortly after scoring, Klopas explained that discomfort and swelling set in, but that Cooper should be fine.
The best news? Both should be good to go for that Canadian Championship final. It’s in August.
