Another form of international soccer got played some miles west of the site of the FIFA World Cup final when USL League One's New York Cosmos welcomed Liga MX side Santos Laguna to Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson, New Jersey on Sunday.
The Cosmos, in the midst of a difficult inaugural season in American soccer's third division, reorganized after a difficult first half but still fell, 2-1, to the top-division foes. Santos will head back to Mexico after completing a preseason road-trip of the Northeast ahead of Liga MX's Apertura season, as they also faced Annapolis Blues FC of USL League Two.
The visitors played in front of a friendly crowd of 1,036 in New Jersey, a far cry from the 7,000+ fans that saw Santos Laguna play at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, last week. The small crowd was a worrying sign, but not a new one for the Cosmos this season.
The performance was still an improvement from a Cosmos side that has struggled to have positive offensive momentum in games this season.
"Yeah, it's a positive impression, of course. Second half was definitely better," said Cosmos head coach Davide Corti after a match in which his group shut out a Liga MX side for 45 minutes. "We should have paid more attention to a couple of things that we need to still work on, but I guess that it was a good performance from the team, especially in the second half. I thought the game was played at a very high tempo, fast paced, especially I thought late in the first half the team started to play better."
The game was also a second appearance for forward Chevone Marsh, who Corti and other team staff confirmed had signed with the team, but was awaiting final approval from the league along with visa clearance. Marsh, a 32-year-old who has caps with the Jamaica and played his last three seasons in USL League One, was rumored to be a target of the Cosmos and also played with the side last week in the team's friendly against amateur side American Soccer Club New York on Long Island.
Santos surges early
New York elected to use a mixed roster to start the match, with coach Corti noting afterward that injuries kept out some players. Backup keeper Tristan Stephani started in goal, with essentially a regular set of 10 players in front of him. The lone exception from league play was Marsh, who started on the right wing next to captain Sebastián Guenzatti and in-season addition Lamin Jawneh.
Despite losing center back Bruno Amione to injury in the team's last preseason friendly with Annapolis Blues, forcing him into a surgery, the Santos Laguna starting lineup was still loaded.
Backup keeper Héctor Holguín played in front of José Abella, Franco Pardo, Kevin Balanta, and Emmanuel Echeverría. Former FC Dallas midfielder Carlos Gruezo was joined by Salvador Mariscal and Diego González. Fran Villalba, Ezequiel Bullaude, and Lucas di Yorio provided the main attack.
Two players were recent signings by Santos. Forward Diego González, who has caps with the Paraguay national team, and center-back Franco Pardo who spent last season with Racing Club in Argentina. And now both were playing soccer at Hinchliffe Stadium.
As the game kicked off the Cosmos took ball possession into the Santos end to start, picking away with Darren Sidoel playing around the middle of the field. However the scoring opened not long after on the opposite end of the field.
In the eighth minute, Santos Laguna got its first chance on goal and capitalized. New signing González received the ball in the box from Carlos Gruezo, and placed a low shot past an outstretched Tristan Stephani.
James Nalton
The visitors continued to attack from there with Lucas Di Yorio having a chance in the 19th minute, forcing a good save by Stephani. Cosmos tried to counter out of the pausa de hidratación in the 35th minute, when Sebastián Guenzatti got behind the backline receiving a long ball. His shot went high off and off target however.
Right before halftime in the 40th minute, Santos Laguna extended their lead thanks to the head of di Yorio. The 6'3'' striker connected with a cross from the right side by Fran Villalba, sending it home past Stephani to make it a two-goal deficit for the Cosmos.
Stephani continues to struggle in his fluctuating role with the Cosmos this season. In five USL League One starts, the keeper has allowed 14 goals and been on the end of four losses with only one draw. It reached a breaking point when, after Derrek Chan picked up an injury, Corti and his staff elected to start the team's goalkeeper coach, Boris Del Valle, in a USL Cup match versus Brooklyn FC instead of Stephani. Corti noted that Stephani was always going to be subbed off at halftime, but he did also say his keepers have not had easy tasks this season, but that they all need to be better.
"What I'm saying to the goalkeepers is that, I mean, it's a very delicate role, so anytime that they make a mistake it's a goal, unfortunately," Corti said. "From the moment that we started, there's a lot of episodes like this where it was too easy to score to us.
"I guess that they need to be more patient and work on their flaws and everything. I just really wish that moving forward, we do less mistakes than it happened before."
Cosmos counter
Coming out of the break, both teams made some pre-planned substitutions. Javier Garcia Jr., the midseason Cosmos addition who essentially became the team's starter until Derrek Chan returned from injury on June 20, entered to play keeper. For Santos, Juan Carlos Echilvestre and Ramiro Sordo came in for Emmanuel Echeverría and Ezequiel Bullaude. A few minutes later, Efraín Orona came on as a Santos substitute for Kevin Balanta.
One of the Cosmos' biggest issues all game was connecting play, and a huge issue with that was Lamin Jawneh. The left winger looked stiff and un-composed multiple times. When the Cosmos tried to play slow and build, multiple times in both halves the Gambian attacker was misplacing passes, out of place and unable to receive balls, or getting stripped of possession.
What did start to work for the Cosmos was installing a high press. Players like Ajmeer Spengler were quickly trying to attack the high line Santos was playing in defense, hoping to feed any of the three Cosmos attackers that he could.
"We tried to give them a high pressure than what we did in the first half instead of just sitting because they were holding the ball with the defenders and then kicking the long ball," Corti explained, noting the subs he brought in also helped thanks to the fresh legs. "The second half we decided to go more direct with the pressure and I guess. That paid off a little bit more because if they lose the ball closer to the goal, there's going to be more chances for us. So moving forward, that's going to be a move that we're going to make."
Attacking chances became more common and while no official stats were made for this match, the home side was the clear leader in both total shots and shots on target in the second half.
The breakthrough for the Cosmos came in the 65th minute, once again capitalizing on the high Santos Laguna defensive line. From midfield, Spengler sent a long ball down the middle and fed a run down the middle by Guenzatti. He battled against a defender, then finished with a low shot that beat the Santos keeper to cut the deficit in half.
"I told Spang every time he turns, to find me over the top, because they were playing a hard line, so I just made that slip run and finished on the side of the net," Guenzatti said of his goal afterwards.
The Cosmos had a stellar chance to tie the game in the 74th minute off a corner kick as the ball was played around the area. New but not-quite-official signing Chevone Marsh got under a high pass behind the backline, onside, and only had the keeper to beat. He did so with a low shot but hit the left post.
It wasn't all offense for the Cosmos, as Garcia and the backline were called on multiple times. The former AC Boise keeper made an excellent diving stop in the 55th minute off a Santos shot from the top of the box. Later in with under 10 minutes to player, a 3-on-2 chance including Garcia saw Santos playing the ball from the left side into the middle where an attacker had a clear shot on goal. Garcia ran and dove far off his line to block the ball from the two attackers.
Later on in the game, it was the backline coming to the rescue. In the 76th, Laguna's Kevin Palacios ran down the left side trying to cut into the box. He lost control of the ball, allowing Cosmos players to swarm him before reinforcements arrived.
The final whistle would eventually blow, ending a disappointing but still impressive showing from the Cosmos.
"We said it before the game, you know, this is like a new start for us," Guenzatti said. "We pick it up from here and we take it to the league. I thought we did a great job, especially that second half, but I thought all around, you know, obviously the first half they had a little bit more of the ball, but I think we adapted to the second half very well."
Small but fun crowd
With Sunday's match drawing what the Cosmos told New York Soccer Journal was a crowd of 1,036 fans, no section of the stadium looked more than half full, with a large portion of the crowd either being Santos Laguna fans, Mexican soccer fans in general, or attending as part of the Cosmos youth soccer partnerships.
Michael Battista
An overall tough look for an organization already facing attendance issues in USL League One this season. According to official match reports, the team has a total attendance of 10,030 this season, averaging about 2,006 fans per game. That would rank them 11th out of 17 teams in the league this season. That's not even factoring in that official attendance figures usually use "tickets distributed," with eyeball tests placing the number of fans at games likely at much lower numbers.
The match occurred in the middle of a World Cup, when club soccer is the last thing on the minds of many fans. The harder pill to swallow is that news of the friendly didn't really leave the Cosmos sphere of influence and reach the general soccer fan.
With that said, Sunday was not a bad day of soccer. The fans of soccer played abroad who did show up were thrilled to be there, and you could see plenty of them hanging off the front bars of the Hinchliffe bleachers trying to get players' attention. That paid off for plenty of them, with kits being given to kids after the game.
For Guenzatti it was actually a second straight year playing Santos Laguna in an international friendly, after the striker played in a 1-0 loss against the side with Detroit City FC of the USL Championship last summer. The captain was optimistic after the match about having the chance to host opposing fans who might not be aware of a local pro team in the area.
"I'm happy that we had, you know, a lot of their fans as well. It was a great atmosphere," Guenzatti said. "Hopefully we get more fans from now on."
The hard truth is that attendance woes and bad play go together, but a match like this and a new signing or two of USL Championship caliber players can re-energize a base. For the Cosmos, the fans who I did speak with agreed that the team looked better. They tried their best to be loud, realistically struggling but being appreciated by players after the game.
The Cosmos will be back at Hinchliffe next weekend for league action, as they welcome Greenville Triumph SC at 7:00 pm on July 4. The Triumph sit just above the Cosmos in the league table, 16th vs 17th place, giving the home team a perfect chance to come out of this fine-tuning and earn needed points.
