MVN - Most Valuable Network

Videos — Steve Nash joins RBNY’s Claudio Reyna, Thierry Henry, others in NYC soccer benefit

On Wednesday night, ‘Captain America’ Claudio Reyna (the former USMNT captain now with the New York Red Bulls) and Steve Nash (2005 and 2006 NBA MVP, of the Phoenix Suns) organized an informal charity soccer match, also with the likes of Thierry Henry and Jozy Altidore participating.  It was meant to be a low-key community event in NYC’s Chinatown…

Little did they know how excited and curious the neighborhood would become !

from the New York Times,

“…throngs of people were packed into, around and over a tiny field in Manhattan’s Chinatown while catching a glimpse of the highest-paid pickup soccer players in the world. People climbed trees, fences and streetlights as the shadows lengthened through the balmy evening. Here and there, they broke into multilingual chants that were born in stadiums an ocean away. They seemed to hardly believe they were watching a playground full of sports stars just fooling around.”

“We had it completely wrong in terms of the excitement,” Reyna said. “We knew people were going to come out, but we just couldn’t believe it when we showed.”

“Nash and Reyna collaborated to bring together a collection of their friends from the worlds of professional soccer and basketball to raise money for their respective foundations. The rosters included a World Cup winner (the Barcelona striker Thierry Henry), three players who have represented the United States at the international level (Reyna, Jozy Altidore and Gregg Berhalter), a handful of former and current players from the English Premier League (Steve McManaman, Robbie Fowler and Salomon Kalou) as well as a smattering of NBA players (Baron Davis, Jason Kidd, Leandro Barbosa and Raja Bell).”

VIDEOS -

Good closeup fan video of Thierry Henry playing

(posted by MH-NYC-SK8),

WATCH HERE

Homemade fan video (posted by FunkyTwoStep), (3:28 min.)

WATCH HERE

The complete NY Times story,

“Soccer and NBA Stars Play for Kicks and a Good Cause”

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 10:31 am and is filed under Soccer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.