Orlando City great victory against Montreal CF

By Alonso Contreras

It was a beautiful day for a soccer match, Orlando City surprised everyone in the formation with Perea and Pato in the starting eleven. Pato was a center back in the beginning with the freedom to do transitions with Facundo Torres, in the other hand, Torres was everywhere, started in the right, then switched with Benji to the left and sometimes with Pato to pressure on the top.

Andres Perea could not connect very well with his midfielders Mauricio Pereyra and Benji. At the 18th minute, Perea played to Pereyra, and Mauricio crossed a beautiful ball to Benji, where he got fouled by Montreal's defender.

More opportunities were built from Facundo Torre's side. At the 28th minute, Orlando City Captain Mauricio Pereyra was close to scoring by shooting from outside the box assisted by Torres. The team started to understand each other.

Minute 40th, Pato and Perea did a header combo, where the Brazilian was close to scoring. Benji missed a huge opportunity to score, great passed by Mauricio, but Benji decided to control the ball, instead of shooting the first time touched.

The first half was very intense but, something that caught my attention was that Cesar Araujo was pressing high and Mauricio Pereyra was covering Araujo's position. This was an excellent tactic by Head Coach Oscar Pareja, who knew how to stop Montreal's midfielders from getting the ball freely. Ruan constantly going up from the right side and creating dangerous plays with passes or crosses.

At the beginning of the second half, the team did a great combination starting with Facundo Torres and Mauricio Pereyra, the captain passed a fantastic through ball to Ruan, who crossed to Alexandre Pato and scored 1-0 in the 48th minute. First Orlando City goal on the afternoon.

Orlando City captain started taking charge on the field and you could see Mauricio Pereyra, Facundo Torres, and Cesar Araujo pass to each other, and the ball barely miss the goal. " Uruguayan Connection"

In the following play, captain Pereyra assisted Benji, and this time he shot at one touched and goal 2-0, 59th minute.

Ercan Kara subbed in for Benji and went as the center forward, Pato moved to the right. Ercan did a great skillful pass to his teammate to create a danger played. He is a very physical player who can bring a lot of goals to Orlando City.

Pedro Gallese "El Pulpo" is like always amazing. The first clean sheet of the season and many to come.

Both teams finished with ten men. Montreal forward Quioto got a red card at the 66th minute, and Jansson got another at the 81st minute.

Head Coach Oscar Pareja: “It’s a great moment to recognize the importance of the energy of the people. The players were talking about it in the locker room and I want to be generous with the fans. They helped us a lot today in a difficult moment, so giving them these three points is very important. I thought we played against a very good team . Montréal has been in competition earlier than everybody else and we found that to be a difficulty, but we matched that and ended up scoring goals and being precise where we had to. At the end, the game became messy, but I thought we had the maturity to deal with it and bring these three points to the people. We’re happy with this start.”

Great Victory! The next game will be an away game against Chicago Fire at Soldier Field at 6 p.m.