Bradley Carnell’s gamble on starting Chris Donovan paid off in the Union’s third straight win

Bradley Carnell knew how close the Union came to losing Saturday night at CF Montréal, a winless team so scarred that it looked afraid of its own shadow.

But Carnell and his players weren‘t there to be nice. They came to win a soccer game. So when Montréal’s Prince Owusu broke one of soccer’s commandments in the 70th minute — thou shalt shoot when the chance is given to you, instead of waiting to pass to teammates — the Union knew it was time to pounce.

The soccer gods agreed, even though they made the visitors sweat. Jovan Lukić came a little too close to conceding a penalty kick in the 77th when he stuck his trailing leg toward Nathan Saliba, and Saliba took the contact as an invitation.

Referee Marcos de Oliveira initially didn‘t call it, the video review officials said he should think again, and he went to the monitor. But he stuck with his decision, and the Union escaped.

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Three minutes and a few more fouls later (including one that prompted a brief sideline fracas), Mikael Uhre called game. Kai Wagner sent a free kick out of the Union‘s half, Lukić settled the ensuing game of pingpong, and then he split Montréal’s defense with a pass that set Uhre free. His first touch settled the ball, and his second beat Jonathan Sirois for his first goal since the season opener.

There are days when style matters, but not many. This 2-1 win certainly wasn‘t one of them.

A move that actually mattered was Carnell’s decision to start Chris Donovan for the first time in the manager’s tenure, and the first time in the Paoli-born striker’s tenure since last July. It’s one thing to rotate the lineup at the start of an eight-and-maybe-nine-game month, but the drop-off from the Union‘s top three strikers to Donovan is still pretty big.

Carnell didn‘t hide from why he did it. Just as a baseball manager occasionally needs an innings-eater, the soccer manager wanted a minutes-eater to spare his big hitters’ legs for a bit.

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“We knew Montréal have the ability to stretch you side-to-side and make you run and put in a shift, and we just thought that ‘Dono’ is a perfect candidate to empty the tank for the team in the first half,” he said. “And this is something that he did. He’s been playing well [in practice], we wanted to reward him.”

There are two ways to judge that: Did Donovan score, and did the Union win? The first failed, as Donovan had just one off-target attempt in his 55-minute shift. But the second succeeded, and that’s the one that matters most.

“We have a big month ahead, and there’s a lot of opportunities to be had,” Carnell said. “And it kind of seems as though that the front four are in a way now that if you look at whoever is striking, they just complement each other so well. They just give everything for each other. It was a perfect example of ‘Dono’ in there tonight.”

The bigger picture looks good, too. Uhre ended his goal drought a week after Bruno Damiani ended his own, and Tai Baribo remains tied for the league’s scoring lead with seven goals.

Uhre has always been first to speak up when he isn‘t scoring, and one of the last to make it about himself when he fixes that. We’ll do it for him here, with an assist from Carnell’s analysis.

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“Yeah, massive,” he said. “I mean, every striker wants to score goals, but I think all of our strikers — you know exactly the DNA of what we want and require from our strikers in our game model. And it’s tiring, right? And when they get the ball, they’re often gassed.”

Uhre wasn‘t gassed this time, having entered in the 74th minute for Baribo. He was fresher than Montréal’s defense, and perched in a nice pocket of space when Lukić moved to play the ball forward. Uhre saw the play develop, turned toward goal before Lukić played the pass he knew was coming, and was off to the races.

Nine games without a goal is a long time, even by Uhre‘s standard of droughts. But make enough chances like this one and two things happen: The ball goes in eventually, and you win games.

Maybe even three in a row, as the Union now have. They stand second in the Eastern Conference (7-3-1, 22 points) after the weekend, thanks to their win and losses by Charlotte and Cincinnati.

And if you still want to talk about style, watch the Union‘s opening goal. Just 58 seconds after kickoff, Danley Jean Jacques took control of a loose ball in his own end, and started a sequence of six quick, short passes among teammates to move the ball up the field.

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The last of them went from Donovan to Jean Jacques, who then took off on a run halfway up the field. As he approached Montréal’s 18-yard box, he laid the ball square for an onrushing Indiana Vassilev, who hit a first-time curler into the top corner for his first Union goal.

That was the good stuff, and it left Montréal climbing uphill for the rest of the night.