by Paul Kennedy @pkedit, Aug 13, 2017

Featuring former Philadelphia Union playersand, first-year Connecticut team Elm City Express won the NPSL title with a 5-0 win over Midland-Odessa FC in a final that was lopsided because the Texas visitors were decimated by losses after the semifinals.and former University of Hartford defendereach scored two goals, while midfielderadded the final goal. Hernandez finished with three assists.



Photo by Mark Smith, courtesy of NPSL



Philadelphia Union ties. Hernandez, who joined Morgan on the NPSL's 2017 Northeast Region Best XI, was one of the best players ever to come out of St. Benedict's Prep in New Jersey and signed as a Homegrown player for the Philadelphia Union.



Jones, an Englishman who spent 2016 with the Union, started in goal for the Express.



Brazilian connection. The club was launched in January by owner Zack Henry and head coach Ted Haley, the 2017 NPSL Coach of the Year, though it took two years to get the New Haven club off the ground.



Express owners had experience via the sister company to K2 Soccer operating a pro club in Brazil: tiny Clube Atletico Tubarao, which plays in the same Catarinese state league as Chapecoense.



Elm City drew increasingly large crowds during its 14-1-2 campaign, developing its own supporters groups, the Brick Oven Brigade and Yard Dogs. The final attracted a club record 3,112 fans at Yale University’s Reese Stadium.



“It’s massive for us,” said Haley, the head coach at Post University. “It started with the ownership group and the management group doing it the right way from the beginning, putting together a collection of players that bought into what we wanted to do and the vision of it. The team worked really hard to get better every week and stay together, grow together. We talked about going on a run and doing something special.”



Midland-Odessa saga. Midland-Odessa upset Detroit City FC in a shootout in the semifinals but the victory was bittersweet as it lost most of its players because of NCAA eligibility rules that prevented them from continuing on in August. Of the 13 players who traveled to New Haven, just six had played for Midland-Odessa before.