New York City FC won the North American Football League (MLS) championship on Saturday for the first time in history, beating the Portland Timbers on penalties (1-1, 4-2) in the final. ‘a final with twists and turns.
The New Yorkers, who opened the scoring in the 41st minute on a header from Valentin Castellanos, served by Argentina’s Maxi Moralez, seemed confident of their victory after having largely dominated a rather disjointed match overall.
But Felipe Mora managed to turn the situation in a miraculous way by scoring for the Timbers a few seconds before the final whistle.
Despite the furious protests of the New Yorkers, who claimed offside, the goal was confirmed by the referee and forced an extension. It ended with the same score of 1-1 despite a fine shot from Paraguayan Portland Christian Paredes, stopped in extremis by a dive from New York goalkeeper Sean Johnson.
The Big Apple team ended up winning 4-2 on penalties, with Johnson managing to block two penalties and giving Peruvian defender Alex Callens the honor of scoring the winning goal.
“It was a crazy match“said New York manager Ronny Deila, who kept his promise, made before the meeting, to strip in public in case of victory, keeping only his underwear.”We were in complete control of the game and I thought we would win in 90 minutes. And then they scored. We were broken“.
“But we’ve hit rock bottom so many times this year. This group of players are winners. It was just a roller coaster game“, added the Norwegian, former of Celtic Glasgow.
The match was marked by an incident. New York Paraguayan Jesus Medina was hit in the head by a can of beer thrown from the stands, just after his side’s goal in the first half.
It was the first time New York City FC had played in the MLS Final. Portland, for its part, was crowned in 2015.
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