Hot on the heels of our post about last week’s disappointing draw with Atlanta FC (a team we outplayed but couldn’t outscore), comes another disappointing draw with our regional rivals, Rocket City United. Chattanooga FC had a great chance to take complete command of the NPSL Southeast division by winning and going a full 6 points up on the closest competition, but, alas, we failed to do it.
To be fair, our team played quite well and easily out-possessed the home team RCU. We also had plenty of opportunities to score more than one goal. Chris Ochieng created chance after chance for himself up front, but a combination of missed kicks and great goalkeeping denied us more than the solitary shot.
While Andy Stewart played great in the backfield, and we give him our Defensive MVP title for the game, we think that midfielder Luis Salazar was the Man of the Match for June 26. Luis consistently made things happen on the field and gave Ochieng so many scoring opportunities. He was fun to watch. Keep it up Salazar! We need you!
A question though: where was Ivan Heredia, and who is this new guy Juan Mercedo? He played well but why haven’t we seen him before this season? Where is he from?
On the downside: Of course, we writers here at the Chattahooligan are biased to Chattanooga FC, but that penalty kick that was called on Drew Courtney was a horrible call! Very suspicious! What is even more appalling is finding out later that 3 of the 4 officials were from Huntsville. What the heck? Who assigned these refs? In a town the size of Chattanooga, isn’t it likely that these referees might be inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to the home team? Very unprofessional! We hope the NPSL is contacted about this, as it seems a bit of match-fixing is not beyond Racket City United.
Then this also has to call in to question the mysterious tie RCU had with Pumas FC early in the season that somehow resulted in ineligible players being allowed on the field for Pumas. And then (amazingly!) was discovered later and turned into a 3-0 forfeit to RCU. How convenient! Not only does RCU get 3 points where there had been only 1, but now they have a goal differential that was 0 magically transformed into a +3… and this in a league where no one has scored three goals more than an opponent! We Chattahooligans want to know: how did ineligible players get on the field in the first place? The refs check the players and their NPSL status before the games. Mysteriously, someone was not doing their job… or perhaps if the officials were from Huntsville, then maybe they were doing their job — making sure the home team got the win. Well, let’s just get 3 Chattanooga officials for the July 17 match here and we’ll see what RCU thinks of that.
And our complaints are not done. There is also the quality of the playing field in Madison, AL. From our vantage point in the stands, the real grass field looked 75% very nice and 25% sketchy. Talking to some players after the game, we found that they felt the field had dramatic variations in surface quality, and several of them were turning ankles in warmups on the bad patches. And the consensus seemed to be that this was certainly not the quality of turf the NPSL should have for the national championships. Call out the landscaping crew RCU! Or you might have some angry contestants come late July.
Lastly, we have to say that we thought the stadium facility overall was fine and the crowd turnout was decent… 900 or so was the official number. Apparently owner Andy Zorovitch’s call to arms to have 3,000 fans turnout in order to outdo Chattanooga fell on deaf ears. We’ll just have to hit this season’s average attendance of 5,725 on the last home game of the season when Racket City rolls into town just to rub it in.
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