Times Free Press staff writer John Frierson will be live blogging from tonight’s Chattanooga FC game. Check online at www.timesfreepress.com for running updates and analysis as CFC makes its first postseason appearance at the NPSL Final Four.
The Chattanooga Football Club will play its first postseason game tonight in the National Premier Soccer League Final Four.
It has been a dream season in many ways for the second-year team, which went undefeated in the Southeast Conference, yet the squad that takes the field 9 EST tonight at Madison City School Stadium, in Madison, Ala., will look a lot different than the one that started the season.
Chattanooga FC (6-0-2), the No. 2 seed in the Final Four, has lost three starters to injury since the opener, including two in the past two weeks, and another had to leave the team due to work commitments.
“One big thing about CFC is we have good team morale and we’ve got a lot of depth in our squad,” defender Andrew Stewart said. “When people get injured it’s a setback, but we push on and know that we’re comfortable with the people around us and know that we can still get a good result.”
Chattanooga FC coach Brian Crossman doesn’t know a lot about his team’s opponent tonight, the third-seeded Madison (Wis.) 56ers, but he does know they are extremely well coached. Leading the 56ers (8-2-0) is Jim Launder, who spent 15 years at the University of Wisconsin and won a national championship in 1995.
“They sound a lot like us, actually, from what I’ve been able to gather, except they’ve got a great coach,” he said.
Crossman said he hasn’t seen any video of the 56ers, who won’t be able to find much of CFC online, either, so both teams will head into the game without a firm grasp on the other side’s abilities and tactics.
“For me, I don’t like coaching like that,” Crossman said. “But my coaching philosophy is that unless the other team is really dominant and better than you, then you don’t try to change a whole lot.”
Midfielder Luis Miguel Salazar said last Saturday’s exhibition against the DC United Under-20 squad in Washington, D.C., was a good test for CFC.
“I seriously doubt any team is going to have that kind of athleticism,” he said of United, which won 3-0. “I figure that if we play as well as we’ve been playing all year, then there aren’t a lot of (NPSL) teams that can beat us.”
In today’s first semifinal, the fourth-seeded Sacramento (Calif.) Gold, a first-year club, will face the top seed, 2008 NPSL champion FC Sonic Lehigh Valley (Pa.), at 6:30 EST. The winners of today’s matches will play for the championship on Saturday, while the losers will meet in a third-place game on Friday.