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One of the hurdles of getting the upgrades to Clarke Stadium is coming to an agreement with the football community on the use of the stadium.

FC Edmonton’s request was met with opposition from the Edmonton Eskimos and local football clubs, who also use the facility.

The groups are expected to get together in the near future to discuss a compromise on the use of the stadium.

“We’re still going through the process and meeting with the stakeholders,” Ball said. “The city is pulling the groups together for discussion. That’s something that has to happen and we’ve always said we want to be good neighbours and we want to find a way to make it work and we will, we’ll find a way to make it work.

“We have to come together and talk. The club has been going down this process with this high-level idea for months and now we’re being guided by the city to get everybody together and talk it out and I’m sure it will be fine.”

On the field, the FC Edmonton academy players, who were joined by former alumni Paul Hamilton, Shaun Saiko, Allan Zebie and Sam Lam, were a bit outmatched by Foothills FC, who feature former Eddies captain Nik Ledgerwood and women’s national team goalkeeper Stephanie Labbe.

Foothills scored two goals inside the first seven minutes of the game, capitalizing on defensive mistakes by the FC Edmonton Academy. They added two more goals within three minutes of each other in the second half.

Labbe came into the game and played the last 10 minutes for Foothills FC. She made an outstanding save to keep FC Edmonton off the board late in the contest on a point-blank shot from the slot.

“I think this was a great day, it was just awesome,” Ball said. “It was a good show of support for the club and the Canadian game. People want soccer here, they want this level of soccer here, they want the CPL and they want Edmonton in the CPL.”

Email: dvandiest@postmedia.com

On Twitter: @DerekVanDiest