PMS: Can We Play Canadian Teams Every Week?

AFTN’s PMS – Post Match Summations

It’s going to be a battle next Wednesday evening at Empire.

Both teams know what they need to do to advance to the final. Montreal have nothing to lose and will be going for it big time. The Caps need to hold tight, not make any silly mistakes but importantly, they need to take the game to Montreal and not sit back and defend the lead. We simply can’t play like that and will be punished.

Under the Empire lights, it’s going to look majestic.

Vancouver’s slim 1-0 victory at Stade Saputo this evening, wasn’t the best performance we’ll see from a Whitecaps side this season, but it was a hard fought and deserving win that will give the team a huge confidence boost. You can read our match report of the game over at Prost Amerika.

Can we only beat Canadian teams though?! The win was our first since the opening day victory against TFC. If we keep that record going of course, we’ll be CONCACAF Champions League bound!

It was a bit of a lacklustre performance at times this evening, but a win is a win. The conditions won’t have helped but we did seem to struggle to get fully going at times.

Davide Chiumiento was kept pretty quiet and it took Russell Teibert a little bit of time to get going. Once he did though, he had a fantastic game and it’s good to see him back in the starting eleven. Man of the Match for us.

It was also good to see Mouloud Akloul start his first game since his broken ankle last April. Why in midfield though? That was a bit baffling when playing him at the back and moving Rochat to left back again would surely have made more sense. He didn’t do it for me I’m afraid as centre mid.

The defence played pretty solidly on the whole though, but Jay Nolly’s handling gave us a few scares along the way. Slippery ball or poor goalkeeping? You be the judge.

That Hassli and Camilo partnership still isn’t clicking. Camilo looked liveliest in the first half and Eric was pretty subdued for most of the game. The control he showed for his shot in the second half when he brought the ball down from the air was fantastic though. Move of the match. No booking either!

The other move of the match was the one that led to the only goal of the game. How Terry Dunfield ended up completely unmarked between two Impact defenders is a mystery but he took that header with aplomb.

The goal could be vital with the away goals rule in effect. Any sloppy defending though next week and we’ll soon lose that advantage.

A final word for the referee Carole Anne Chenard. We’ve roasted her before in this blog but we always believe in giving full credit where credit’s due and she had a great game tonight. Some MLS refs could learn a thing or two from her performance tonight. Never thought I’d be saying that!

Now that the NHL have finally announced their round 2 schedule, it’s great to see that there will be no Canucks game clashing with next Wednesday’s second leg at Empire.

There should be a full house out in force for the game. No excuses. You want real football, you’re not going to get much better than a midweek Cup tie under the lights.

Toronto awaits. Champions League, here we come? Let’s hope so. Fourth time lucky.

Mon the Caps.

Authored by: Michael McColl

There is 1 comment for this article
  1. Krammerhead at 04:39

    I was disappointed with the crowd in Montreal. So what if the Canadiens were playing a game 7 playoff game. The stadium should have been at least half full. Lets hope that the next games in Toronto and Vancouver are shown a little more respect.

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