FC Dallas Wastes Petar Musa's Debut

Montreal found two counter attacking goals to grab a win at Toyota.

Petar Musa scored a scintillating goal late in the first half, assisted by Bernard Kamungo (and VAR), to bring FC Dallas level and cement the excitement in the record signing, but Josef Martinez slotted a beautiful counter-attacking goal past Maarten Paes to give Montreal a win on the road.

Needless to say, fans left Toyota Stadium in disappointment after a strong start to the season.

FC Dallas head coach Nico Estevez seemed to acknowledge the frustration.

“We didn’t do what we had been doing. Some of these guys haven’t played together the whole preseason. The team at the end of the game included Paxton, Patrickson, Sebastian, Jesus, and Petar - all almost new players,” Nico said to media. “It was a good punch in the face that there is a lot of work to do. The season is long. We believe we are building something that is going to be good, but it needs to be one step at a time.”

In particular, the team missed Sebastian Ibeagha, out with an injury, and saw multiple mistakes by Omar Gonzales and other players who contributed to hasty turnovers that made life easy for Montreal.

Specifically, I asked about the backline play and how Nico was rating it.

With a stronger performance, the squad may have been able to hold on to at least one point at home. The defense can be singled out to blame for that, but Nico wasn’t settling with that excuse.

“It’s an interesting question,” Nico said about the defensive performance. “We want to attack more. Last season, the questions were about the attacking. This season, the questions are going more to the defensive side. We need time to adjust things. The team needs time to grow. We missed a lot of easy passes. Sometimes, when we are defending, we lost some duels that we should win to win the ball. Those duels that we lost, it helped our opponent to attack or transition. It’s not only about the back line. It’s about the press. There were three stray passes to Martinez in the second half. It’s the little things that we need to solve.”

The home crowd was silenced multiple times by Montreal’s counter-attacking prowess. It was disappointing, no doubt, to waste such a strong audience at this stage of the season.

While Jesus Ferreira and Paxton Pomykal made returns after dealing with injuries, another intriguing debut was midfielder Patrickson Delgado. In limited minutes, he was lively and aggressive, something to build on as the team looks to future games.

We’ll have more coverage this week of the game and the rest of Major League Soccer.