HEMPSTEAD, NY – Saturday night’s 1-1 draw against the Atlanta Silverbacks may have been the New York Cosmos strongest performance of the season, but it was without question their most physical contest to date.
Some of the physical play between New York and Atlanta on Saturday. Photo by: Stacy Podelski /1495 Sports
Through the 90-minute affair the Cosmos and Silverbacks traded blows, and at times, even got into a bit of a shoving match that resulted in a yellow card.
“Every game is different and some games are like that,” Hunter Freeman said after the game. “I think you see two of the teams that are the top teams and for us every time we play a team they’re going to want to show it’s their championship game. We say it before every game and that’s exactly what we get from every team.”
Despite the physical nature of the game, calls were hard to come by for the Cosmos. Marcos Senna did score in the 44th minute off a penalty kick, but the officials seemed to miss calls and call fouls against New York that some would consider soft.
“You always feel that sometimes that they’re getting certain calls that you aren’t,” Freeman explained after the game. “It seemed a little bit that some of the fouls they were getting called for were rather soft; where as for us to get a foul it was a pretty obvious one. But that was not the reason why we tied the game.”
Head coach Giovanni Savarese would not comment on the officiating after the game, saying he does not like to discuss the officials after the match. “I think you guys are able to see very clearly what happened during the match and it’s your point of view. For us we finished the game and concentrating on the next game,” he said.
Regardless of the officiating, the Cosmos have seen opposing teams come out and play their hardest against them in particular. Freeman believes that the Cosmos name brings the best out in opposing players.
“These guys want to do their best against us and that goes for the team and that goes for individuals too,” he said. “It speaks for what the Cosmos stand for. Those guys are more or less using that as their way to show Gio, or whoever it is, hey I want to be on that team.”
“I think the Cosmos name stands for itself. You can make whatever, we’re in the NASL and not MLS, but I think you asked anybody on any other teams that they want to be on the Cosmos. That’s not being arrogant, but I think that’s just the truth,” he added.
Even though there was the frustration of the officiating there was a lot of positives that came out of the match between the Silverbacks. New York ended the match with Atlanta with 17 total shots and had what Savarese felt was one of their finest nights in what is still a young season for the team.”
Savarese addressed the overall offensive effort by saying, ” In one sense it is frustrating (to have so many chances unfinished) but we did create a lot of great opportunities. There is something working and we are getting there. Now we need to work more on putting the ball on the net.” Coach continued by saying, “We created so many great opportunities and we could have definitely won the game and in the end that is more work that we will need to do-we have to focus on the positives today.”
When asked about the performance of the team overall thus far Savarese had these thoughts, “Every game the team looks better , I think today was probably our best game so far. Everything we have worked on was seen, we completely dominated the ball, we crated chances-they only had one opportunity which was the goal so I’ve seen the team mature very much.”
The Cosmos will look to continue their growth as a club will look to continue their fine play at Shuart Stadium on Saturday, September 14 in a 7 pm match against the Minnesota United.
1495 Sports fans are encouraged to check out Brad Kurtzberg’s coverage by clicking the link below:
http://1495sports.com/2013/09/08/cosmos-dominate-but-settle-for-1-1-draw/
1495 Sports TV also has the post match thoughts from Hunter Freeman and Marcos Senna that can be seen by clicking here:
http://1495sports.com/2013/09/08/videos-new-york-cosmos-post-match-interviews-97/