Nashville SC broke their club record for goals in a season as Sam Surridge scored on a header late in the proceedings to nab a 1-1 draw with CF Montreal in their final home match of the season.
Surridge leapt onto the end of a curling cross from veteran midfielder Gaston Brugman, fighting off the challenge of Brandon Craig to send the ball flying past goalkeeper Thomas Gillier in the 81st minute.
Fresh off their first trophy in club history, a partially rotated Nashville side (16-11-6, 54 points) continued its somewhat spotty run of form in league play, in which the team has now dropped points in four of its last five. Even so, the draw might very well be enough to stop the club from fretting about staying above a wild-card position as the season draws to a close.
Forward Dante Sealy opened the scoring for Montreal (6-17-10, 28 points) in the ninth minute. The Trinidad international blasted the ball past Nashville goalkeeper Joe Willis directly off a free kick, which was taken from a virtually identical position to the one he scored against Charlotte FC in the team’s last outing.
Montreal FC thought they had doubled their lead in the 33rd minute when team-leading scorer Prince Owusu finished a string of touch passes with a simple side-footed finish past Willis. The ball was judged to have deflected off defender Jalen Neal in an offside position upon VAR review.
In a match in which Nashville struggled to scurry away from the home side’s relentless man marking, it was Surridge who seemed to force open the floodgates with a bouncing header that glanced off the near post in the 70th minute off a free kick from Hany Mukhtar.
A perfectly floated through ball off the boot of Sealy sprang Montreal midfielder Ivan Jaime on a swift counter-attack in the eighth minute, stuffed close-range by Willis, who was forced to dart out from between his posts to gather the ball.
The result brought Montreal to 28 points, equal to its worst-ever season finish with one match remaining. Montreal interim head coach Marco Donadel was suspended for the match due to yellow card accumulation, leaving David Sauvry in charge.
–Field Level Media
