MONTREAL (AP) — Saphir Taider scored two goals only a minute apart early in the second half, and the Montreal Impact held on to beat the Colorado Rapids 2-1 Saturday night for their fourth straight win.
The Impact (8-11-0) have won five of their last six games to get back into the hunt for a playoff spot in the MLS Eastern Conference.
Substitute Dominique Badji scored for the Rapids (4-12-3), who lost a second game in a row and fell to 1-6-1 on the road.
The Impact found themselves against a opponent that played 10 men back, clogging the 18-yard box in front of designated player goalie Tim Howard. They tried high crosses, low crosses, dribbles from Ignacio Piatti on the left and Alejandro Silva on the right and lobs up the middle — each time being blocked by a blue and yellow-clad Rapids defender.
Fullback Daniel Lovitz danced in and shot over the bar early on and Piatti got off a curling shot in the 40th minute that went into Howard’s arms, the only one of nine first-half shots to get through while the Rapids had no attempts.
In the 55th minute, Silva recovered a ball and fed it to the right side, where Taider shot between Howard’s legs for a goal.
Two minutes later, a counterattack saw Silva feed Piatti on the left for a lob into the middle that the Algerian international fired in for his second of the game and third of the season.
A free kick in the 79th saw the ball go off defender Rod Fanni to Badji, who had replaced Yannick Boli in the 50th, alone on the doorstep for an emphatic blast into the net on his seventh goal of the season. The goal ended Evan Bush and the Impact’s shutout string at 420 minutes.
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