Soccer
Anderson: No one expected us to be here
NCFC striker Oalex Anderson speaks to the media after winning the USL League 1 Championship.
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NCFC striker Oalex Anderson speaks to the media after winning the USL League 1 Championship.
This is big. This is big for everything that we went through for the past two seasons, finish in last place. And then this season to just go all the way and win a championship. This is big time. This is my second championship and it feels like my first, this one feels more special than the first one. I mean, just because of everything that we had to overcome to get to this point, get to this stage, it big time to go through some of the ups. And what does that say about this mentality, you know, comes down to mentality. Um, last season we had a, a very young team, um, inexperienced. Um, this year, we made a lot of, a lot of bringing a lot of good players, Rafael Louis, um, et cetera and it has come down to mentality this year. And I mean, we, we came into this year with a chip on our shoulders and I mean, just because of what happened last season and we try to try to get the fans out. I don't know if you remember, I don't know if you remember before preseason started, we were making calls to the fans trying to get everyone out. And, I mean, we don't, we don't, we don't blame them because we've been, we've been horrible for the past two seasons, but we promised a championship and here we are tonight. That's big time. I mean, I, I've played in, in our atmosphere with like 40 50,000 people, but to be here to be at home on this field with our fans, it's a different feeling, you know what I mean? And we just, we just want everyone to, we're going to take it up another level next season, we're going for the championship and we want everyone to come and we want to get the same attendance that we got tonight next season, every home game. Like we, we made a lot of sacrifices. We talk to each other. We have a lot of, a lot of meetings. We have a lot of get togethers and we ask everyone we got to buy into, to whatever the coaches is asking for us. We gotta buy into it. If we got, if we got to win championship, if we gotta make playoffs, we gotta go all the way we got, everyone's got to buy into whatever the coach is asking for. And everyone came in with the mentality that like we're not going to just settle for making the playoffs. We want it all. And we got more motivated game after game. If we win, we go, we say all right. We want another one to be honest, I don't think anyone expected us to be here tonight lifting this trophy and I mean, to prove a lot of people wrong because if we go back to the prediction this year, we were predicted to finish last place and here we are lifting the trophy and that means something. You know what I mean? That means that shows the grit, the mentality of everyone, the coaching staff, the owners, the players and it's big time. It is big time. Did you say you were calling people to try to get them to? Yeah. Uh, they had us in the office, um, before preseason started, they had us in the office making calls to, um, season ticket holders trying to get them to come out to, to see a game or two. And to be honest with you, no one, no one accepted, no one. We didn't, we didn't sell one. You know what I mean? And even though we promised championship, we don't blame them. We've been horrible for the past two seasons, so we don't blame them, but we told ourselves something in order for us to bring out the fans, we got to win games and we've done that and we went all the way, win a championship and the, yeah, that's big time and that is big time. I mean, we don't know what the future holds for everybody, you know what I mean? But for the club. It is, it is huge and it's huge for a lot of players because it means opportunities even though it might not be here, it means opportunities elsewhere. So I'm really just happy for everyone. Everyone that's been involved. Thank you for all the support, all the trust that everyone's put in the team. And hopefully we can get everyone out next season, support the team, whether I'm here or not. And hopefully we can get everyone out because this is a huge club. It's a big club. Congrats go enjoy it. Appreciate you guys. Give me that one back. Don't.