Josef Martinez outworked a defender and pushed home the deciding goal in the 60th minute as visiting CF Montreal outlasted FC Dallas 2-1 on Saturday in an interconference game in Frisco, Texas.
CF Montreal (1-0-1, 4 points) beat the Toros for the first time ever on the road, moving to 4-1-1 in six games played in between the teams in North Texas in the series.
Montreal goalkeeper Jonathan Sirois made six saved to secure the win, outdueling Dallas keeper Maarten Paes, who had four.
Dallas (1-1-0, 3 points) managed just 10 shots after producing 23 in its season-opening 2-1 home win over San Jose.
Montreal opened the scoring on Jules-Anthony Vilsaint’s first goal of the season. He made short work of a pass into the box in the 20th minute by Matias Coccaro, beating Paes to the center of the goal with a blistering shot.
The Toros evened the score in the first minute of first-half stoppage time as Petar Musa, the Croatian national who just became eligible for participation after receiving his work visa, just stayed onside while receiving a cross-box assist from Bernard Kamungo before ripping a right-footed shot into the net beyond the reach of Sirois.
Martinez, who entered the game as a substitute late in the first half when Coccaro went down with a leg injury, pushed the Blue, White and Black back to the front in the 60th minute, running deep into the box after a pass from Ruan Gregorio Teixeira and clanging a shot off Paes that dribbled into the net.
Sirois allowed Montreal to keep the lead when he leaped while on his line to bat away a shot by Nkosi Tafari in the 85th minute.
The game was the second of a six-game road trip to open the season for CF Montreal and was the first against FC Dallas since March 2020.
–Field Level Media