Josef Martinez can eliminate his former team when CF Montreal host Atlanta United in Tuesday night’s Eastern Conference wild-card game.
Martinez played for Atlanta from 2017-22, winning the MLS Cup and Most Valuable Player honors in 2018 before an ACL tear in early 2020 disrupted his career.
He has never quite recaptured the form of his early years, but the 32-year-old came close during Montreal’s late surge to secure the eighth seed and home field for the wild-card match.
The Venezuelan scored six times as Montreal won four of its last five matches. In Saturday’s 2-0 home win over New York City FC to clinch the berth, he was heavily involved on Caden Clark’s first goal before scoring the second moments before halftime.
“What Josef did for us in the last few months has been really clutch,” Montreal manager Laurent Courtois said postgame, in French. “We are trying to control what we can control, and whether it’s resilience or technical quality and timing, everyone has raised their game lately and it’s working out well.”
Included in Martinez’s dazzling late-season run was a brace in a 2-1 victory at Atlanta on Oct. 2 that appeared to doom his former side to a third failure to reach the postseason in the last five years.
Instead, interim manager Rob Valentino’s group closed the season with back-to-back wins. Atlanta snuck into the ninth and final spot on decision day with a 2-1 win at Orlando City on early goals from Saba Lobjanidze and Jamal Thiare, combined with losses by D.C. United and the Philadelphia Union.
It has been an impressive late-season revival for a team parted with former manager Gonzalo Pineda in June and transferred star attackers Thiago Almada and Giorgos Giakoumakis later in the summer.
But Lobjanidze’s steady production, combined with some help from newly arrived attacker Aleksei Miranchuk, has helped rescue Atlanta’s season.
“In terms of the mentality, don’t settle now,” Valentino said of his squad. “You’ve got yourselves in on the last day, you stayed consistent, you kept fighting, you kept showing up so it’s just don’t let this be the end.”
–Field Level Media
