Scottish footballer Calum Mallace is just 90 minutes away from winning the Concacaf Champions League trophy.
Tonight in the Olympic Stadium in Montreal, the 25-year-old from Torphichen in West Lothian will be part of the Montreal Impact squad looking to defeat Mexicans Club América and become only the third Major League Soccer side to win the event.
Last week in the famous Azteca Stadium, Montreal Impact dug deep to secure a 1-1 away draw in front of over 104,000 supporters in the first leg.
"It was pretty crazy. Obviously you have to take a step back from football every once in a while so before the game I was just taking it all in, appreciating it all, like the history of that stadium with Diego Maradona and the 'Hand of God'. It was pretty spectacular," Mallace said.
Mallace and his family moved from their village near Bathgate when he was nine to Minnesota, where his father had a job, and after graduating from school there he went to Marquette University in Milwaukee. It was during his university days that he flourished as a midfielder and now he is in his fourth season with Montreal.
He added ahead of the second leg: "This will definitely be the biggest game of my career and I'm well excited for it."
The Impact have signed experienced German goalkeeper Kristian Nicht ahead of the match and he is set to play. Regular goalkeeper Evan Bush is suspended for the encounter with Eric Kronberg cup-tied. Kick-off is at 8pm local time (1am in the UK).
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article