Today I'm going back 7 years to 27th July 2014 and the North American Soccer League (NASL) game between FC Edmonton and Indy Eleven at the Clarke Stadium in Edmonton, Canada.
FC Edmonton or "the Eddies" as their fans tend to call them produced one of those annoying newspaper style programmes that don't fit neatly and tidily into my collection and tend to get damaged rather too easily. Still, I suppose that I should just be grateful that a programme was produced at all.
Clarke Stadium is located more or less right next to the Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton and I covered that recently in my article on the 2015 Women's World Cup. Clarke Stadium is much smaller than the Commonwealth Stadium but is fit for purpose since the Eddies wouldn't normally generate the crowd necessary to fill the larger venue. The attendance for this game was just 3,152 which is about par for the Eddies. When I first started watching the Eddies at Clarke Stadium, the pitch was rather disconcertingly marked out for American / Canadian Football but, not too long before this game, the old pitch was replaced a new 3G surface with normal soccer pitch markings alone. If you watch the video attached to my blog you'll notice that the lines are actually yellow rather than the traditional white and I can only assume that this is in recognition of the likelihood of snow on the pitch at some point during the season. NASL seasons took place within a calendar year, from spring to autumn, in order to avoid the winter months but snow was still a feature at times in Edmonton!
Indy Eleven are based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Whilst this game took place in the NASL, both teams have since moved onto other league competitions following financial issues with the NASL. Today the Eddies play in the Canadian Premier League and Indy play in USL Championship (USLC) which is effectively at the second level of football in the USA although there is no promotion / relegation between the MSL and the USLC.
This was one of those games where FC Edmonton dominated and hit the woodwork three times without managing to score and were then caught by a sucker punch in stoppage time as Indy stole the points with a late goal from the World Cup winning Brazilian and former Manchester United player Jose Kleberson.
CRB Match No. 1988
Comments
Post a Comment