A FRIENDLY GAME OF SOCCER
The New York Cosmos played the Valencia CF as part of Soccer Day in Saskatchewan at Mosaic Stadium in Regina. Valencia CF Simone Zaza tries to make his way through three Cosmos defenders.
“It was nice; it was beautiful to come to this beautiful city. The support from everyone was great, and I hope to come back.
More than 15,000 Saskatchewan soccer fans got to enjoy 90-plus minutes of high-level action at Mosaic Stadium on Saturday.
Capping off the daylong Soccer Day in Saskatchewan festivities, the New York Cosmos beat Valencia CFL 2-0 in a competitive, backand-forth match.
The Cosmos represent the North American Soccer League and the borough of Brooklyn, N.Y., where they’ve played since 2013. The squad is coming off back-to-back NASL championships and showed Regina soccer fans throughout the afternoon that those titles are no coincidence.
Valencia CF, meanwhile, calls Valencia, Spain home and is one of the most popular clubs in international soccer, boasting a club trophy case that rivals almost any other team in the sport.
Although the match was classified as a “friendly,” in that the results won’t affect any standings or rankings, players from both sides seemed to happily sacrifice their bodies to get a small edge on the other team.
In the end, it was a pair of New York midfielders who made the difference. In the 52nd minute Eric Calvillo spread out the opposing goalkeeper for the first score of the match. New York’s Emmanuel Ledesma followed that up by putting the game on ice with an impressive goal in the 76th minute.
Fleet-footed New York captain Juan Guerra, who was named “man of the match,” was quick to praise the Queen City faithful after the game.
“It was nice; it was beautiful to come to this beautiful city. The support from everyone was great, and I hope to come back,” the affable Venezuelan national-team standout said.
“We’re going to go home happy,” he added, “and we’re going to go home and keep working on what we need to do to get better.”
Despite being down a goal right out of the gate in the second half and eventually facing imminent defeat, Valencia didn’t go down without a fight, mustering several jaw-dropping scoring opportunities before time expired.
The goals had local fans on their feet, but so too did the several nearmisses, fancy footwork, attempted headshots, and rough-and-tumble leg fighting.
Soccer Day in Saskatchewan was attended by spectators of all ages, ethnicities and backgrounds — including Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall.
Wall says he was cheering for New York in the game because they were the underdog on paper, so he was happy with the result. But the premier seemed even happier to see the city’s new stadium put to good use on a hot summer day.
“It was wonderful,” Wall said after the game.
“When there was discussion about building the stadium in the first place, we talked about it being multi-use — we talked about it being more than a football stadium for the Riders, as important as that is — and today was a great example of that. We had a great crowd watching international soccer at the highest level.
“I was very glad to see this event happen here today.”