Montreal • Justen Glad and Sergio Córdova scored in a 12-minute span in the second half, leading Real Salt Lake to a 2-1 win over CF Montreal on Sunday.
“We knew going into the game that we just had to stay the course,” Glad said. “We went into halftime and the halftime speech was just ‘keep doing what we’re doing, keep playing. We’re going to get our chances, and if we stay solid in the back, we’re going to have a shot at this game.’ I’m incredibly proud of the group. We showed a lot of fight out there, and it’s a huge three points.”
Djordje Mihailovic scored for Montreal (6-5-2), which dropped points at home for the first time this season.
Montreal wasted no time seizing the advantage when Ahmed Hamdi found Mihailovic unmarked in the box, giving Montreal the lead 43 seconds in — the club’s third-fastest goal in MLS.
Montreal appeared to move to a two-goal lead 15 minutes later when Mihailovic found a streaking Romell Quioto, but the goal was ruled offside and disallowed.
Real Salt Lake tied the score nine minutes into the second half when Gleb scored his second of the season, heading a corner by Pablo Ruiz.
“I think we did a tremendous job bouncing back from the first minute. I didn’t feel that we were not confident, but we have to re-watch it,” midfielder Jasper Löffelsend said. “Obviously going down in the first minute is kind of tough, but we did a great job from there. It didn’t take us out of our rhythm. We continued playing out of the back, what we were practicing on over the last couple of weeks. We got more comfortable at that. We had some great chances in the first half and then finally broke the lock in the second half.”
Just after the 60-minute mark, Córdova converted a powerful shot into the bottom right corner.
“I think with every game that we play we become much more confident with the ball, creating good opportunities on goal without losing that defensive bite,” RSL coach Pablo Mastroeni said. “I think when you can play both sides of the ball with the type of mentality we’ve been playing these past two games, these are really building blocks. I couldn’t be more proud of this group and the way they approached it and more importantly, how they believed in themselves in a way that today this group looks nothing like the group that started the year. The idea is we continue evolving, we continue learning from the game whether we win or lose and be the team that is one of the toughest on both sides of the ball to play against.”