Charlotte FC beat CF Montreal 2-1 at Stade Saputo on Wednesday night for a sixth match unbeaten, and the result leaves the club fifth in the Eastern Conference.
The most notable thing about the night belongs to Pep Biel. His assist on Charlotte's equalizer was his tenth of the season, and he has already scored ten. According to the club, that makes him one of three players in Major League Soccer to reach ten goals and ten assists in 2026. The other two are Lionel Messi and Evander. Biel is also, by the club's count, the twenty-second player in league history to do it in back-to-back seasons, and his forty-eight career goals and assists for Charlotte now tie Karol Swiderski's club record.
The match itself turned twice. Daniel Rios put Montreal in front in the 34th minute. Three minutes later Liel Abada answered, set up by Allan Saint-Maximin and Biel. It stayed level until the 81st, when Idan Toklomati scored the winner from a David Schnegg cross, with Saint-Maximin credited on the second assist.
Toklomati had come on in the 28th minute, an early substitution the club's release does not explain, and he was on the pitch fifty-three minutes before he settled it. The club counts the goal as his eighth in MLS this season, the nineteenth of his career, and the ninth game-winner of his Charlotte tenure, which ties him with Biel and Swiderski for the most in club history.
Charlotte did all of this without its captain. Ashley Westwood was serving a suspension picked up in the 71st minute at Houston on September 5, when he was sent off for a second yellow card, both of them for arguing with the referee. He served it Wednesday and is eligible again.
His replacement in the unavailable column is Schnegg, who was booked in the 68th minute for his fifth yellow of the season, and the club says he is suspended for Saturday's match at FC Cincinnati. So Charlotte will play a second consecutive match missing a first-choice starter to a card, and this time it is the man who set up the winner.
Abada's goal was his fourth in MLS this season and his ninth goal or assist in league play, in 941 minutes. He matched that total in 2024, but it took him 1,647 minutes. Saint-Maximin's two assists were his third and fourth in MLS across three matches.
On the table, Charlotte sit on 39 points from 24 matches, level with fourth-place Chicago Fire, who have played a game fewer. Four wins and two draws have come in the last six league matches, and two wins and a draw in the last three on the road. The top seven clubs in each conference go directly to the first round of the playoffs; eighth and ninth meet in a wild card match.
Attendance at Stade Saputo was 12,324.
FC Cincinnati is Saturday. D.C. United follows on September 19, also a Saturday.