Tai Baribo’s goals give the Union a 2-0 win over CF Montréal in the Leagues Cup

The Union beat CF Montréal, 2-0, on Friday in the round of 32 of the Leagues Cup in front of a sparse crowd at Subaru Park.

Tai Baribo scored both goals, one in first-half stoppage time and one in second-half stoppage time. The win advanced the Union to a round of 16 game at FC Cincinnati on Tuesday (7:30 p.m., Appple TV. It will be the first time the Union play a road game in the Leagues Cup, for what that’s worth.

The Union clearly were the better team in the first half Friday, with an 9-2 shots advantage and 57% of the possession. But it took a while for them to break through.

The play emerged from a decent bit of buildup play that started with Nathan Harriel, in his first Union game back from the Olympics. He sent a nice cross-field pass to Leon Flach, who then sent the ball to Kai Wagner on the left flank.

Wagner usually hits a high cross from there, but this time he played it low and short to Sam Adeniran. He turned on the ball, headed toward the end line, and fired a shot that Montréal goalkeeper Jonathan Sirois could only knock down. Baribo was right there to cash in his eighth goal of the year.

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The Union could have had two more goals in the first half, but referee Daniel Quintero left alone two potential penalty kicks: a Joel Waterman handball in the 11th and Dawid Bugaj’s push into Flach’s back in the 28th.

Quintero and his colleagues, a Mexican crew, judged Waterman’s right arm to be in a natural position near the ground and Bugaj’s push to not have been a foul. The crowd, as small as it was, disagreed.

Union manager Jim Curtin made a trio of substitutions in the 60th minute: Jack McGlynn (in his return from the Olympics) for Flach, Alejandro Bedoya for Dániel Gazdag, and Mikael Uhre for Adeniran.

Gazdag notably had taken a knee to the back from Montréal’s Ariel Lassiter just before exiting, on a play where Lassiter launched a shot halfway up the River End stands. Quinn Sullivan, who had started at the left central midfield spot, moved into Gazdag’s central attacking role.

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Olivier Mbaizo replaced Harriel in the 69th, then 10 minutes later was on the receiving end of a nasty collision in the air. Fortunately, he was able to continue playing.

Things nearly got worse for Mbaizo in the 87th, when he was red-carded for a challenge where he swung through Sunusi Ibrahim and got the ball along the way. Fortunately, Quintero was summoned to the replay monitor and saw that he got his initial call wrong. The red was downgraded to a yellow.

Baribo finished the night with a breakaway score in the 96th minute, sprung by a nifty outside-of-the-foot pass from McGlynn. That meant the win could regain the title of the night’s biggest story, followed by Gazdag’s injury.

Third place goes to the tiny crowd, as Union fans clearly rejected the Leagues Cup’s claims to matter. But it’s fair to say that’s not the kind of third place that gets a bronze medal.

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