At 7:30 on a slightly chilly and overcast Wednesday evening in Queens, New York 1,851 raucous soccer enthusiasts filed into to St. John’s University’s Belson Stadium to watch the U.S. Open Cup match between the New York Cosmos and the Brooklyn Italians.
Following the introduction of the respective clubs starting lineups the match began. In the moments of the game it seemed as if the proceedings might be derailed following technical difficulties that saw the stadium’s clock malfunction. The issue was soon corrected, however, and the match continued. At points the game reached a furious pace with both teams racing from one end of the pitch to the other with a startling intensity.
The track meet, which broke out on the playing surface, was occasionally interrupted by brief lulls in play most often caused by surprisingly physical nature of the match and the scoring of the Cosmos.
While the Italians’ supporters in attendance did an admirable job of cheering the club on Brooklyn was unable to match the Cosmos superior play and spent a large portion of the match watching New York dominate in number of shots on goal and time of possession. Jimmy Ockford of the Cosmos scored the first goal of the match in the 15th minute of the first half and in the 30th minute of the half Hagop Chirishian scored the match’s second and final.
The aforementioned physical play did not go unnoticed by officials and at the end of the first half Yvener Diese of Brooklyn and Hagop Chirishian the Cosmos had both received yellow cards. The second half saw more of this scrappy play as referee Andres Pfefferkorn issued cards on five occasions during the second half.
Although New York was unable to score a goal in the second half the team’s first half offensive prowess proved to be too much for Brooklyn as goalie Jimmy Maurer was able to shutout the Italians en route to a 2-0 Cosmos victory.
Following the game St. John’s University alumni, New York native, and Cosmos midfielder, Jimmy Mulligan said that “….. We played well, moved the ball around, I think we had a lot of space out there, but yeah good result for us now we can move on play (the) redbull(s) and that’s pretty much the ultimate goal.”
Mulligan went on to speak about the atmosphere for soccer at Belson stadium saying, “I thought we had a good turnout we had a lot of our fans here and (I’m ) really happy they came out and it was a good atmosphere really loud and (it) really helped us get this win.”
Following the victory the Cosmos advance to face The New York Red Bulls in the fourth round of the longest running soccer completion in the United States, the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, at Hofstra University’s Shuart Stadium on June 14th.
