Showdown in Chinatown 2009 Highlights

The 2009 Showdown in Chinatown was this past Wednesday. If you’re unfamiliar, that’s where the NBA’s Steve Nash organizes a game of soccer in New York City featuring big names from the worlds of basketball and football.

In attendance this year were… from the world of football: Claudio Reyna, Thierry Henry, Javier Zanetti, Salomon Kalou, Ryan Babel, Giovanni van Bronckhurst, Mathieu Flamini, Ivan Cordoba, Adrian Mutu, Edgar Davids.

And from the world of basketball: Steve Nash, Tony Parker, Jason Kidd, Grant Hill, Chris Bosh, Raja Bell. Obviously the teams were mixed.

Dave Martinez was there, and has a great slideshow of images and match highlights up on Red Bulls Offside.

More highlights from the event can be found below:

The New York Post were there, and give a nice overview of what happened:

The players make their entrance:

Our friends at Unprofessional Foul got plenty of footage, asked Claudio Reyna whether footballers or basketballers were the better athletes, and did their best to pimp UF to famous people. I can’t decide if I prefer Chris Bosh’s reaction (”what’s that?” “never heard of it.”) or Mathieu Flamini’s (mutter something in French).

A nice collection of stills from Gomet.co.uk, apparently edited by Lock Stock era Guy Ritchie:

Chris Bosh proves that there’s such a thing as being too tall to score a header:

But Grant Hill has got the goalpoaching instincts of a young Robbie Fowler:

Steve Nash knows how to hit a penalty:

Here’s some unedited footage taken by fans watching through the fence:

More highlights over on RedBulls Offside.

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Category: World Football