Montreal 1-2 Columbus
The Impact scored the first goal of the game for the 15th time this season, in the 23rd minute. Following a cross towards the far post by Patrice Bernier from outside the box, defender Matteo Ferrari played the ball back towards the centre of goal with a header, near the six yard line. Di Vaio found a hole between the defenders and ran onto the ball to put a point blank header past Crew goalkeeper Matt Lampson. Ferrari earned an assist in his 50th career game in MLS, while Bernier found his team-leading 8th assist of the season.
The Crew equalized in the 66th minute when Federico Higuain took a free-kick that curled towards Chad Marshall in the box. The veteran defender got a head on the ball as he jumped to beat Impact keeper Troy Perkins far post.
The visitors then found the lead in the 78th minute when forward Federico Higuain, running down the left flank, found Dominic Oduro on the run behind the Impact defence. The midfielder managed to get a toe on the ball, redirecting past Perkins as he charged out.
Post-game comments
“Definitely Columbus is our nemesis,” said Impact head coach Marco Schällibaum. “We haven’t won against them yet and I think if we would have been able to get that second goal we would have won, but it was not meant to be. That’s soccer.”
“I thought we played very well in the first half,” added Arnaud. “We came out in the second half and it wasn’t perfect. Ideally it would be, but at 1-0 we still created some chances that we didn’t score on. Unfortunately, we let them back into the game on a set piece. We talked about it during the week and we were conscious that we had to be careful on these set pieces since they are very good with them.”
“We had a lot of chances and we controlled the game well from the first ten minutes,” said Marco Di Vaio. “Columbus is a tough team for us to play against, so it was no surprise for us tonight that the game was hard.”
