Silverbacks vs. Cosmos For Title

The New York Cosmos were late joining the North American Soccer League 2013 season, but they will be playing for the championship.

The Cosmos captured the fall season regular season title with a 2-1 win over the San Antonio Scorpions They will play the spring season champion Atlanta Silverbacks in the 2013 NASL Soccer Bowl, Saturday, Nov. 9.

The game will be played at Atlanta Silverbacks Park and will be televised on ESPN3 and ESPN Deportes.

The Cosmos saw their drive to the championship game altered for a week after settlng for a 1-1 draw against FC Edmonton. The Eddies tied the game in the 90th minute of play on a goal by defender David Proctor.

That left open the door for the Tampa Bay Rowdies to catch them, but two goals in the second half completed a comeback against San Antonio and slammed that door shut.

“All the guys knew that we needed three points to go to the Soccer Bowl and its not easy to do when youre a goal down, but we came back after halftme ready to do the job,” said Cosmos assistant coach Carlos Llamosa.

Perhaps it is fitting that the Cosmos, a soccer icon in the original NASL, would play for another title. The original Cosmos won five Soccer Bowl titles, the last coming in 1982 when Giorgio Chinaglia scored the goal to beat the Seattle Sounders, 1-0.

The legendary club returned to NASL action on August 3 and has won eight games, drawn four and lost only once to earn advancement to the title match.

The Silverbacks captured the first half of the NASL’s split season on the last day of the spring portion of the regular season.

The second half of the season was not so kind to the Silverbacks. With one game left in the fall season, Atlanta sits in sixth place with a 4-5-4 fall season record.

The Silverbacks have stumbled with back-to-back road losses to Fort Lauderdale (6-2) and the Carolina RailHawks (4-0). Their final regular season game, which will be played at home, is ironically against the Cosmos.

“The upside to our next games is that we’ve won our last three games at home,” said Brian Haynes as he prepared his team to complete the 2013 season. “We need to have confidence going into these games and we can’t just expect to show up and play well. We need to know what it takes to win a game.

“Here’s the weird thing about it. After we won this spring, anyone can say that all we have to do it prepare for one game. That’s a fallacy because if we did that, then we would’ve fallen flat on our faces.

“The good thing about the loss, if there is a good thing, is that we know what it feels like to lose and we know how excited we are when we win.”

The split season is unique for American professional sports, and this is the first year the NASL has utilized it. At least from the standpoint of the Silverbacks, they are at home the rest of the way.

“We’ve been stingy at home and haven’t given up a lot of goals,” said Haynes. “so it starts with defending and if we defend well, then our offense is going to click.”

Silverbacks goalkeeper Joe Nasco was asked about getting ready for the championship game, and a player’s perspective coming into the last regular season game after the back-to-back losses.

“I think it’s going to be a little bit harder because we aren’t coming off of a win, but off of a couple losses, which were our worst losses of the season,” said Nasco.

“It’s going to come down to each individual player and them doing what they have to do, and these past two weeks we haven’t been anywhere close to playing as well as we can.

“I think a lot of people are questioning us now as well, but I also think that you take any team who wins the spring, and they would be in a similar position to what we’re in now.

“Now we can turn it around and make it better, or we can be like San Antonio (Scorpions) who dominated all last season and lost in the first round of the playoffs.”