MONTREAL – On Saturday, D.C. United became the first team in MLS history to win by taking just one shot
Their opponents, the Montreal Impact, weren’t the first team to take 25 shots and fail to win. But they took 25 shots and failed to win for the second time in just over a month.
This 1-0 home defeat to United, on Saturday night, was “frustrating,” head coach Frank Klopas said many times over in his postgame press conference. But Klopas was also “extremely proud” of his group for their efforts.
“It’s not the shots – I just felt we dominated the game,” Klopas said. “We made a little mistake early on, but it was just unfortunate that the only thing that was missing was the goal. We played extremely well as a team. We made good decisions. We kept the ball. At times, in the first half, we tried to force it a little in the middle. But you can look at the stats, that’s the frustrating part. It’s a missed opportunity here, I believe.”
After Chris Rolfe scored off a blunder in the Impact’s defensive half, goalkeeper Bill Hamid did what was needed of him. He made eight saves, denying Montreal a chance to jump to third in the East with games in hand still.
“Hamid was good,” his Montreal counterpart Evan Bush said. “One of his specialties is getting himself big in one-on-one situations. He goes down, makes himself big, and he did that well. Outside of that, I think that, a couple of shots from distance, if we had guys that were crashing the box, I think we could have put away a rebound or two, but we didn’t and he had a good game.”
This was Montreal’s third defeat in 11 home games in MLS this season. The previous one, against NYCFC, also saw the opponent frustrate Montreal into several drives from distance. Josh Saunders also made eight saves that game.
Not worried with this scenario repeating itself, Klopas sounded more optimistic that his team can indeed find the breakthrough, as they did against Seattle on July 25th with the last of their 15 shots.
“It’s unfortunate that we gave up the early one," Klopas said. "Other than that, we kept things pretty tight. We created chances. One of them has to go in. We pushed the game in the second half. We got the ball out wide. We continued to put pressure with crosses in the box. We had good combination plays. We got in front of the box a lot. We broke through three or four times. Hamid made some key saves, and it was frustrating on our part.”
