Saturday night, the Chattanooga Football Club didn’t conduct its beloved postmatch tradition of allowing fans onto the field for autographs after the team’s 4-3 exhibition loss to Real Betis of Spain’s La Liga.
That doesn’t mean there weren’t a lot of autographs being sought, but it was the Chattanooga FC players eagerly seeking a signed jersey or selfie photo with some of the top soccer players in the world on the team they’d just played in Finley Stadium.
“This is big-time to play against a high-level team from the first division in Spain,” CFC forward Joao Costa said after the match. “It’s something unreal for us. We usually are playing these guys on the video games, so this is a dream come true.”
Costa gave his team the chance to dream of a victory in the 12th minute of play when he took a pass from Juan Hernandez and put a shot past Real Betis goalkeeper Joel for an early 1-0 lead against a team coming off road wins over La Liga rival Real Madrid and Major League Soccer’s D.C. United.
“We started dreaming about competing, and that’s what they did,” CFC coach Bill Elliott said. “We knew they were good and were going to turn it on and put some pressure on us, but we got three goals tonight against a team that went into D.C. and beat a good MLS team 5-2. For us to get a 4-3 result, I couldn’t be more proud of our guys tonight.”