New York Red Bulls 2, Montreal 1
Sometime after he retires, Thierry Henry of the New York Red Bulls may look back on his spectacular bicycle kick against the Montreal Impact and say it was one of the best goals of his long career.
After the Red Bulls' 2-1 win Wednesday night, Henry was more concerned that his team almost blew a 2-0 lead in the closing minutes with him sitting on the bench after being lifted so the crowd could salute him.
''When I was on the bench I was going crazy, the way we finished,'' said Henry, who scored both goals to lead New York to its fourth straight win. ''That's the way I am. Hopefully, I will have the time to enjoy all the goals I scored in my career, but not now. That's what I have on my mind now, the way we finished the game.''
The end was scary when it should have been a laugher after Henry's fifth goal of the year gave New York a 2-0 lead in the 88th minute.
Marco Di Vaio cut the lead in half, scoring for Montreal in the 90th minute. The second-half substitute almost tied the game a minute later, hitting both goalposts on one shot.
''I have been fortunate to score some good goals in my career,'' said Henry, who has more than 300 career goals as a professional. ''But you cannot think about it right now. What I am thinking about right now is we have to play better until the end of the game.''
However, Henry's fifth goal of the season was all anyone will remember. Juninho took a corner kick from the right side that Red Bulls defender Markus Holgersson flicked toward the left post. Henry brought the 11,892 fans out of their seats when he went head over heels to drill the ball into the net.
Red Bulls midfielder Tim Cahill has seen Henry score his share of goals in England.
''Tonight shows the class he's got,'' Cahill said. ''When we need him, he comes up trumps and that goal was pretty special. That finish, it was classy. That's what you need.''
Di Vaio got his fifth goal of the season off a turnover two minutes later and he nearly got his sixth a minute later. His shot banged off the right goalpost, slammed into the left and somehow stayed out of the net, avoiding a dramatic letdown.
''That shot was mind-blowing,'' Petke said. ''I don't know how it didn't go in. Those are the things that drive you crazy. We have to manage the game a little better than that.''
The loss was only the second for Montreal (5-2-2).
''We never gave up,'' Impact coach Marco Schallibaum added. ''This was one of our best games away from home. My guys were in very good position.''
Henry had given the Red Bulls a 1-0 lead late in first-half stoppage time.
The goal came on a counterattack with Henry sending a pass from midfield to Eric Alexander on the right wing. He cut into the box and fired a shot that hit the bottom of the crossbar. Fabian Espindola, who came on in the 25th minute when Peguy Luyindola injured his left hamstring, got the rebound and centered the ball to Henry. The Frenchman's shot from 5 yards out went into the net off the leg of Impact defender Hassoun Camara.
''That's why he is on the field,'' Petke said of Henry. ''It just takes a moment of magic from him, and he had two tonight.''
The win avenged a 1-0 loss to the Impact in Montreal earlier this season.
The Impact, who rested Di Vaio until the 66th minute because they played in San Jose over the weekend, had a couple of good first-half chances against Luis Robles. Sanna Nyassi had the best, breaking past the Red Bulls' defense in the 21st minute, only to have Robles come out and smother his shot.
Henry could have had two goals in the half. His shot in the 18th minute went just wide of the right goalpost.
Nyassi had two other chances in the two minutes before Robles stoned him in close. The Gambian was wide of the right post in the 19th minute and hit the crossbar in the 20th.
Robles stopped a shot in the box by Andrew Wenger just seconds before the counterattack that led to Henry's goal.
DC United 0, Houston Dynamo 4
Will Bruin continued his dominance over D.C. United on Wednesday night, scoring two goals and assisting on two others to lead the Houston Dynamo to a 4-0 victory.
Bruin, who now has four goals this season, has scored nine times in nine career appearances against United. He notched the first multi-goal game of his career with a hat trick in a 4-1 win over United in Houston on April 29, 2011.
''I guess it's just a confidence thing,'' Bruin said with a smile. ''I should be playing like that against every team.''
Giles Barnes and Andrew Driver also scored as the Dynamo (6-2-2) won their second straight road game in a rematch of last season's Eastern Conference finals.
D.C. United (1-7-1) was shut out for the fourth time in five games and has lost six straight for only the second time in club history (2006-07). United's home losing streak stands at four since its 17-game home unbeaten streak ended against Columbus on March 23.
After Brad Davis won an aerial challenge at midfield in the early going, Boniek Garcia found a streaking Bruin. Bruin was able to sidestep a lunging Dejan Jakovic before eventually chipping United goalie Bill Hamid with a deft right footed touch in the 16th minute for a 1-0 lead.
''That's one thing we knew that if we could get on them early their heads would go down and maybe they wouldn't have as much fight,'' Bruin said about the importance of an early goal against a struggling side.
Houston doubled its lead 12 minutes later thanks to some help from United and with Bruin again being the focal point.
After receiving a back pass from Jakovic, Hamid's clearance attempt barely made its way outside the six-yard box and fell right to the feet of Bruin. From there, Bruin looked up and slid a pass to his left, allowing Barnes to send the ball into the back of the net.
Barnes would leave the game in the 36th minute with a right hamstring injury. The forward was replaced by former US international Brian Ching.
United's best two chances came off the same play midway through the second half. After a well-placed corner kick, Dwayne DeRosario looked close to scoring twice in the 63rd, but both times Dynamo defender Kofi Sarkodie cleared the ball off the Houston line.
United is off to its worst start since 2010 when it opened 1-8. That was also the season in which current head coach and former player Ben Olsen took over for an ineffective Curt Onalfo.
''Is my job on the line?'' Olen said. ''It better be. I'm the leader of this team, but I have faith in what I'm doing, and I'll continue to go about my work.''
With United pressing for most of the second half, Houston was able to counter with success as Bruin added his second goal of the game in the 78th and then again in the 88th when Driver easily tapped in a Bruin pass for his third goal of the season.
After scoring a career-best 12 goals last season, Bruin had been stuck on just two through eight appearances this season
''It was just a matter of time,'' he said. ''I knew I had been playing well and contributing in the offense and just not getting goals.''
FC Dallas 1, Portland Timbers 1
Kenny Cooper scored on a penalty kick in the 77th minute to lift FC Dallas into a 1-1 tie with the Portland Timbers on Wednesday night.
The draw extended the unbeaten streaks for two of the hottest clubs in MLS to eight games apiece.
Cooper's second goal of the season came after Portland's Andrew Jean-Baptiste was shown a yellow card for pulling down Blas Perez inside the penalty area. The ball wasn't anywhere near them when Perez tumbled to the ground.
''It was just me and Perez battling,'' Jean-Baptiste said. ''He was holding onto me, I was holding onto him, we were just both fighting for it, but the ref felt like I drug him down.''
Cooper then stepped to the dot and slotted a low shot just inside the left post to tie it.
''I feel like I let my team down,'' Jean-Baptiste said. ''We had three points in the bag, we knew the second half was ours, and I just let my team down with a silly lack of focus and the ref gave them a gift.''
Dallas coach Schellas Hyndman was pleased with his team's resilience
''For us to be down 1-0 and to dig in and to come back and get a PK and walk away with a point, we're very happy with,'' Hyndman said.
Timbers coach Caleb Porter wasn't pleased with the call.
''I thought we deserved to get three points out of that game,'' he said. ''... It's hard to win a game when you're playing against 12 men. That's just completely unfair.
''I'm not going to criticize anyone specifically, but that's just unacceptable, and off the ball, where two guys get tangled. There were 20 other plays in that game that were just like that exact one that could have been called, in both boxes, so I think it's just a travesty.''
Raul Fernandez made three saves for Dallas, which owns the league's best record and is 6-0-2 in its last eight. Dallas also remains unbeaten at home (5-0-1), outscoring the opposition 10-3.
Cooper nearly gave Dallas the victory in the 86th, but Portland goalkeeper Donovan Ricketts got his hand on Cooper's blast from the edge of the box, deflecting it just over the crossbar.
Diego Chara scored and Ricketts made four saves for the Timbers, who are now 3-0-5 in their last eight matches. It was Portland's first point earned in Dallas, having lost on its previous three visits by a combined 10-1 margin.
''It wasn't one of our best team performances, we played well in patches, but when you play on the road and come out with a point, you have to leave happy,'' Ricketts said.
Chara's first goal of the season snapped a scoreless tie in the 70th, coming off a nice setup from Rodney Wallace, who had just entered the match seven minutes earlier. Wallace worked his way around Dallas' Je-Vaughan Watson and chipped a pass across the box to Chara for a one-timer past Fernandez inside the right post.
Dallas controlled the ball for much of the first 15 minutes, with Cooper generating the game's first prime scoring chance, drilling a shot from just outside the penalty area in the 16th that just curled wide of the left goalpost.
After withstanding sustained pressure from Portland, Dallas nearly scored when Castillo raced into the penalty area from the left wing and fired a left-footed shot that Ricketts knocked aside with his arm.
Ricketts kept the match scoreless with a diving save five minutes into the second half when Castillo's lead pass sprung Perez in on a breakaway, knocking aside Perez's 20-yard blast.
FC Dallas star midfielder David Ferreira, the 2010 MLS MVP, left the contest in the 54th minute after having to limp off the field with an apparent right leg injury twice within a four-minute span.
''He tweaked his hamstring a little bit,'' Hyndman said.
Dallas also played without Jackson, who received a red card in Dallas' 2-2 draw at Vancouver on April 27 and served his one-game suspension.
''We were missing some guys tonight, unfortunately that happens throughout the season, but we didn't stop,'' Cooper said. ''We kept knocking on the door and we were fortunate enough to get a penalty.''
Sporting Kansas City 0, Seattle Sounders 1
Seattle coach Sigi Schmid had seen this drama play out three times before, so he made a bold prediction when he subbed in Mauro Rosales with a few minutes left in a scoreless game.
''I said, `We're going to get one here,''' Schmid recalled. ''And we did.''
Just in time, too.
Djimi Traore was in the right spot late in stoppage time Wednesday night, taking advantage of a breakdown by the Sporting Kansas City defense to score the game's only goal and give the Seattle Sounders another memorable victory over the reigning Eastern Conference champs.
Seattle improved to 6-1-1 against Sporting KC, with four of those wins coming on goals in stoppage time. Seven of the Sounders' 11 goals have come in the final 15 minutes of games.
''It's sort of hard to figure out sometimes,'' Schmid said with a shrug. ''You just have a team you can't get past and another team you have success against.''
The teams had played a defensive-minded game most of the night, but Seattle finally got an opportunity when Zach Scott threw the ball in with about four minutes gone in stoppage time.
The ball was deflected toward the net - the Sounders' Brad Evans was there to contest it - and Sporting KC defender Aurelien Collin whiffed trying to clear it. The ball bounced to the feet of Traore, who slammed it into the back of the net with his off foot.
''It's a big victory for us,'' Traore said. ''We worked hard during the game, you know. It was hard for us in the first half because sporting Kansas City was in good position, but in the second half we came back and worked hard and scored that goal.
''I don't know if we deserved it,'' he added, ''but it was good, because we needed those points.''
The Sounders (2-3-3) lost five of their first seven games across all competitions, but are 2-0-3 in their last five, slowly climbing back into the Western Conference race.
Sporting KC (5-4-2) lost for the third time in its last four games.
''For as well as we played in the first half, that's how bad we played in the second half,'' Sporting KC's Graham Zusi said. ''It's not anything they did. They didn't really have too many sniffs at our goal. Passing was off. Touches were off. Just a poor second half.''
The goal also spoiled the return of Sporting KC's Kei Kamara, who rejoined his MLS club as a second-half substitute after spending the first half of the season on loan to Norwich City.
Kamara warmed up in the dressing room before coming onto the field to the roar of a sellout crowd of more than 18,000. But even though he played 11 games with his English Premier League club, it was evident that it will take a while for Kamara to get acclimated with Sporting KC.
''I knew he'd be disconnected at times,'' Sporting KC manager Peter Vermes said. ''It's good to get him out on the field with us, but look, he needs a little time.''
Osvaldo Alonso returned to the Sounders after missing their draw with Philadelphia while his wife gave birth to their second child. But that didn't mean Seattle was back to full strength.
DeAndre Yedlin and Lamar Neagle were serving red card suspensions, and Obafemi Martins, Shalrie Joseph, Steve Zakuani and Marc Burch were out of the lineup with injuries, forcing Schmid to go with his 12th different lineup in 12 games.
The Sounders' depth didn't improve when backup goalkeeper Marcus Hahnemann was dismissed from the bench for using foul or abusive language - he'd taken umbrage with an official on the sideline, and adroit lip-readers could make out his colorful choice of words.
Sporting KC played without defender Matt Besler, who's been out with a right knee injury.
The closest either team came to scoring in the first half may have come when Sporting KC's Ike Opara appeared to get a piece of the ball with his hand on a throw-in near the mouth of the goal.
The officials never blew the whistle for a hand ball.
The game looked as if it'd be decided by a pair of stingy defenses until the final minutes were ticking away, and Traore found himself in the right spot for the Sounders in stoppage time.
''We're happy to get the win. We needed the points,'' Schmid said. ''This team has played well over this last period of time, in terms of us competing, and we needed a smidgeon of luck, which we haven't been getting.''
New England Revolution 1, Real Salt Lake 2
Substitute Olmes Garcia scored in the 89th minute and Real Salt Lake rallied for a 2-1 win over the New England Revolution on Wednesday night.
Devon Sandoval tied the score for Salt Lake (5-4-2) in the 77th minute at Gillette Stadium, scoring on a rebound after Revolution goalkeeper Bobby Shuttleworth stopped a shot by Sebastian Velasquez.
Ryan Guy opened the scoring for the Revolution (2-4-3) in the 51st minute, sending a volley into the lower corner from the top of the box off a cross from Kelyn Rowe.
New England had a chance to equalize when RSL defender Carlos Salcedo gave up a penalty kick and was ejected in stoppage time, but Saer Sene hit the penalty weakly and Nick Rimando made the save with a dive to his right.
The win kept Salt Lake unbeaten against the Revolution in their last six matches, a span that dates to 2009. Salt Lake jumped to second in the West with the victory, while the Revolution remained in seventh in the East.
San Jose Earthquakes 2, Toronto FC 1
Chris Wondolowski set up the tying goal and scored the winner to lead the San Jose Earthquakes to a 2-1 victory over Toronto FC on Wednesday night.
Wondolowski scored in the 81st minute, using his right knee at point-blank range to jam home Walter Martinez's flicked header off Marvin Chavez's corner kick. It was the fifth goal this year for Wondolowski, who tied the MLS single-season record with 27 last season.
The win ended a six-game winless streak for San Jose (3-3-5), which reached .500 for the first time in more than a month. Toronto (1-5-4) saw its victory drought extended to eight straight matches.
Earthquakes rookie Adam Jahn tied things up three minutes into the second half with his fourth goal of the season. Jahn beat Toronto goalkeeper Joseph Bendik with a left-footed strike from 10 yards, having been freed up when Wondolowski one-timed a quick throw-in from Dan Gargan.
Justin Braun put Toronto up 1-0 in the 14th minute with his fifth career goal against San Jose. Doneil Henry headed Darren O'Dea's long free kick and Braun, returning from a one-match absence due to a foot injury, wrapped a left-footed volley around his marker to beat San Jose goalkeeper Jon Busch from 5 yards.
Toronto has allowed seven goals in the final 15 minutes of matches this season, and this is the third straight match for Toronto in which a game-winner has been struck beyond the 80th minute.
San Jose, last season's Supporters' Shield winners with the league's best regular-season record, vaulted into a tie for fourth place in the congested Western Conference standings.
Wondolowski almost generated a pair of goals in the first half. His sixth-minute header to the far corner was barely turned aside by a superb, leaping save from Bendik.
In the 45th minute, Wondolowski fed a low cross from the end line to the top of Toronto's 6-yard box, but teammate Shea Salinas blasted his open shot over the crossbar.
