Heading into the second leg of their Concacaf Champions League Round of 16 series against Santos Laguna, CF Montréal are down but not out.
Head coach Wilfried Nancy's side nearly advanced through Leg 1 in a scoreless deadlock, holding their Liga MX counterparts until an 88th-minute header from forward Jesus Ocejo created a 1-0 aggregate deficit for Wednesday's rematch on Canadian soil – postponed one day due to weather (8 pm ET | FS2, TUDN in US; OneSoccer in Canada).
While the late concession soured an otherwise gutsy defensive effort, defender Joel Waterman told reporters on the club's Monday media availability that one goal will change the complexion.
"It's not insurmountable at all," Waterman said. "We know we're in it. We had lots of chances down in Mexico, defended well, so we know the game's there for the taking – we know the ratios on how many goals we need to win by. It's a long game, it's 90 minutes, we don't need to rush anything. We're going to be composed. We just need to get one and it's anyone's game."
Montréal had their chances in Leg 1, most notably with an early finish from Romell Quioto that looked to have delivered a massive road goal, but was waved off by Video Review for a foul in the build-up. With the Stade Olympique crowd behind them, head coach Wilfried Nancy hopes their attack turns it up a notch and spends more time on the front foot vs. Los Guerreros.
"Obviously the fact we're playing at home, we're ready to put more pressure at certain moments during the game," Nancy said." But we were not able to do it [in the first leg] because we played away against a good team also, but we want to play our game. We want to be a quality team defensively, so this is what we want to do. After that, I liked certain moments during the game where we played away, the way we played it was really interesting. We were able to put our game in place to try and unbalance them.
"We need to score, we know that. I love it because we play this game to score goals, so we're going to be able to do it and we'll see."
Should Montréal indeed advance, they'd face the winner of the Forge FC (Canadian Premier League) vs. Cruz Azul (Liga MX) series in the quarterfinals. If there's an aggregate deadlock after regulation time, the away-goal tiebreaker will be used. If that's not applicable, the winner of the series will be determined in a penalty-kick shootout.
Montréal are looking to add another chapter to their storied history in the competition, which includes a run to the 2015 final. They also reached the 2009 quarterfinals before falling to this same Santos Laguna, felled by goals from current Houston Dynamo FC attacker Darwin Quintero.
"For us we want to rewrite our own story, we want to make our own history, in a sense," Waterman said. "So for us we know the importance of what this game means to past players, but obviously the presents fans and players on this team. For us it's all about going in there, putting in a good performance and winning."
With the margins razor-thin going into Wednesday's match, Nancy said his side must be deliberate in their approach, knowing they need to chase an early equalizer but also ensure the visitors don't extend their lead.
"The perspective is that we know if we score one goal, we do PKs," Nancy said. "So the objective is if we can score two goals we're going to do it. We know that it's going to be a story. What I mean by that is depending on the situation we're going to have to score goals or defend or keep the score, so again the spirits are the same, when we play again we try to win the game. So for me, for the staff, for the players this is what we want to do because this is the way we think. And after that depending on the game, depending on the situation, depending on the momentum we will adjust if we have to."
