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The Ultimate Pickup Game
A small patch of artificial turf in Lower Manhattan will be the location for perhaps the ultimate pickup soccer game Wednesday evening.
The Showdown in Chinatown, a charity game for the benefit of two professional athletes’ foundations, added a big name to the roster of players Monday.
“We’ve been lucky because I had dinner with an old friend, Thierry Henry, and he’s going to play on Wednesday,” Steve Nash, one of the game’s principal organizers, said Monday in a telephone interview from a taxi in Manhattan. “It’s exciting for New York to have one of the best players in the world to come down and play on Chrystie Street.”
Nash, a four-time N.B.A. All-Star and the point guard for the Phoenix Suns, spends his summers in New York because “it’s an amazing city, and it’s a place my wife and I love.”
The match, an eight-on-eight game, is scheduled to kick off at 5:30 p.m. at Sara D. Roosevelt Park on Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Stanton Streets). Admission is free. In addition to Nash’s foundation(stevenash.org), the game will benefit the foundation of Red Bulls midfielder Claudio Reyna. Other players scheduled to participate include the former Liverpool stars Steve McManaman and Robbie Fowler, and the N.B.A. players Jason Kidd, Leandro Barbosa, Raja Bell, Baron Davis and David Lee.
“Leandro Barbosa is Brazilian and one of my close friends, so I think it’s a natural for him,” Nash said.
Nash is part of a group that hopes to obtain an M.L.S. team for Vancouver in his home province, British Columbia. Nash’s father was a professional soccer player in South Africa and his brother Martin plays for the Vancouver Whitecaps in the United Soccer Leagues First Division.
Nash said, “We’re really optimistic and we’re hoping to have some good news at the M.L.S. All-Star Game in Toronto” on July 24.
A small patch of artificial turf in Lower Manhattan will be the location for perhaps the ultimate pickup soccer game Wednesday evening.
The Showdown in Chinatown, a charity game for the benefit of two professional athletes’ foundations, added a big name to the roster of players Monday.
“We’ve been lucky because I had dinner with an old friend, Thierry Henry, and he’s going to play on Wednesday,” Steve Nash, one of the game’s principal organizers, said Monday in a telephone interview from a taxi in Manhattan. “It’s exciting for New York to have one of the best players in the world to come down and play on Chrystie Street.”
Nash, a four-time N.B.A. All-Star and the point guard for the Phoenix Suns, spends his summers in New York because “it’s an amazing city, and it’s a place my wife and I love.”
The match, an eight-on-eight game, is scheduled to kick off at 5:30 p.m. at Sara D. Roosevelt Park on Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Stanton Streets). Admission is free. In addition to Nash’s foundation(stevenash.org), the game will benefit the foundation of Red Bulls midfielder Claudio Reyna. Other players scheduled to participate include the former Liverpool stars Steve McManaman and Robbie Fowler, and the N.B.A. players Jason Kidd, Leandro Barbosa, Raja Bell, Baron Davis and David Lee.
“Leandro Barbosa is Brazilian and one of my close friends, so I think it’s a natural for him,” Nash said.
Nash is part of a group that hopes to obtain an M.L.S. team for Vancouver in his home province, British Columbia. Nash’s father was a professional soccer player in South Africa and his brother Martin plays for the Vancouver Whitecaps in the United Soccer Leagues First Division.
Nash said, “We’re really optimistic and we’re hoping to have some good news at the M.L.S. All-Star Game in Toronto” on July 24.
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