Harambee Stars captain Victor Wanyama was named Montreal Impact’s Man of the Match in their 1-0 loss to Toronto FC in a Major League Soccer (MLS) match at the Saputo Stadium in Montreal early Saturday morning.
After a goalless first half, Spanish midfielder Alejandro Pozuelo scored the all-important goal from the spot on 50 minutes.
Montreal Impact were fifth fifth on the Eastern Conference standings before kick-off and were out to break into the top four with a win over the Reds.
Toronto FC leapfrogged Columbus Crew SC at the summit of the standings, but having played one more game.
Montreal players were not keen on honouring this game as they wanted to boycott to protest racial injustices in the United States. Several MLS teams did the same on Wednesday and Montreal players were keen to support the cause.
The game was eventually played and Montreal Impact coach Thierry Henry did not want to talk about the plan to boycott it by his players.
“I’m not going to go into those details. If you don’t want to talk about the game, it’s going to be difficult. I still think it’s super important to talk about the game,” Henry said.
“Toronto played a great game this Friday and deserved the victory. Can we talk about that? If you want to talk about other things later, you can do it, but respect what you have to do now,” he added.
Defender Rudy Camacho confirmed that, at first, the players did not want to play.
“We agreed not to play, but on Thursday we talked to some Toronto players and they said they wanted to play. We didn’t agree with that,” he said.
In their last match, Toronto registered another 1-0 win after overcoming the Vancouver Whitecaps.
Interestingly, Montreal’s last game in the MLS was against the Whitecaps where Romell Quioto and Lassi Lappalainen in the comfortable 2-0 win.
Toronto and Montreal face-off in yet another installment of the MLS Canadian Classique on Wednesday at the BMO Field in Toronto.
