MONTREAL — Dane Richards scored in the 67th minute, and the Red Bulls, playing a man short, beat the Montreal Impact 2-1 on Saturday night to extend their winning streak to five games.
Richards pounced on a rebound in close and put the ball under the crossbar, beating fellow Jamaican star Donovan Ricketts.
“I was just in the box, lurking around, and the ball popped out to me and I just knocked it home,” Richards said. “I know my countryman, Donovan Ricketts, he’s unhappy with me right now but I had to do it.”
Kenny Cooper scored his 10th goal to draw the Red Bulls (8-3-1) even as both teams converted penalty kicks in the first half. The striker drove a shot into the top right corner in the 37th minute.
Cooper moved past injured teammate Thierry Henry for the team lead in goals.
The Red Bulls were down to 10 men in the 58th minute after Victor Palsson was shown his second yellow card of the match. Referee Ismail Elfath brought out the red card after Palsson was called for a trip from behind on Impact striker Miguel Montano. Palsson earned his first yellow card 4 minutes in for his hard tackle on Felipe.
“It’s a brilliant performance,” Red Bulls coach Hans Backe said. “It’s five in a row now with a quite inexperienced team. I mean, you can’t demand anything else. It’s almost shocking to pick up wins like that.”
Bernardo Corradi scored his team-leading fourth goal 22 minutes in for Montreal (3-6-3).
“It’s frustrating because they basically come down the field one time,” Impact coach Jesse Marsch said. “It’s a play where we have a lot of numbers back and now it comes to the feet of Richards and he puts it in.
“It’s an incredibly disappointing and frustrating game because we just let this one slip away, but in a lot of ways our ideas and our attempts were not bad.”