West Sacramento
, Calif.
– Behind the goals of Humberto Suazo and Arturo Alvarado, Monterrey defeated Preston North End 2-0 in front of 9,605 fans at Thursday’s International Soccer Match at Raley Field.
Suazo scored the game’s first goal in the 60
th
minute when he took a deflected ball and lobbed it into the high right corner of the goal for the score. The second goal of the match came in stoppage time, when Alvardo poked the score from inside the box on a second-chance opportunity.
Played with emotion throughout, the match included 28 fouls and two ejections – one on the Monterrey side and one on the Preston North End side. Monterrey had 10 shots and Preston North End had eight.
As expected in an international soccer match, enthusiasm and nationalism filled the seats of Raley Field as fans packed the stands adorned in country colors and waving their national flags. The 110-by-65-yard field ran from approximately home plate location to the left field wall, allowing fans an up-close look at all the action.
At media day on Wednesday, Preston North End coach Paul Simpson expressed how impressed he was with Raley Field as home to the event.
“This is a great place to come and have a game of soccer,” Simpson said. “This is a lovely stadium here. It’s not used to seeing soccer games, but it’s a nice stadium and our players are looking forward to the game.”
Monterrey, a Premier Mexican soccer team, won the Clausura League Championship in 2003 and was runner-up in the Apertura in 2004 and 2005.
Preston North End, one of the founding members of the English Football League in 1888, finished the 2006-07 season in seventh place in the Coca-Cola Championship (England’s second tier) with a record of 22-16-8 put them just one point shy of a playoff berth for the opportunity to be promoted to the English Premier League.
Preston North End’s roster included several current and former national team members, including goalkeeper Wayne Henderson, who began his pro career at the age of 17, defenders Graham Alexander and Callum Davidson, both have recently appeared with the Scotland National Team, and striker Patrick Agyemang represented his home country of Ghana in 2006 World Cup qualifying matches.
