Everything beside Chilean victory should be an major surprise. One Panama player plays in Croatian national league: Abdiel Arroyo, I dont know him at all. His club RNK Split is 4th or 5th. Since Dely Valdes, I don't know a lot about Panama players. Their good result is victory against Bolivia and one draw against Venezuela (Friendly Match).
I'll be pulling for Chile here. I got tickets to the quarterfinal in Santa Clara. Would love to see a Mexico Chile rematch. They had a heated friendly before the start of the tourney.
With Bravo, Isla, Beausejour, Medel, Vidal, Aranguiz, Sanchez, Pinilla, Vargas, Gonzalez...they cant lose, unless Medel gets red card. Panama lost against Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua lately. Chile belongs to the football upper class. Two consecutive World Cup Round of 16, Copa America title holder, Confederation Cup participant in the 2017 year. They have a good chance now at Copa America. ...los hinchas siguen cantando
If our forward line starts scoring the 100000 chances they create, then we should advance. Otherwise I'd rather us stay in the group stage.
Its important that Chile wins this group. Winner gets Venezuela, Runner Up gets Mexico. This is hard to expect, so Chile will have harder way with Mexico. In semi-final Colombia or Peru. Argentina will have great way through. Bolivia is their next opponent, after that Venezuela, in semi-final Argentina could meet USA or Ecuador, there is no Brazil, Uruguay...pretty good way.
Chile winning the group is impossible though. They'll need to hope Argentina loses to Bolivia missing Chumacero and Moreno and then beat Panama by 6 goals (or less if Argentina lose). Chile are almost guaranteed to get Mexico if they go through, which sucks. I don't want to see either Mexico or Chile in the top 4, so I'm hoping Panama win here.
Costa Rica would love to win and end as runner-up just enact their revenge vs Mexico for the Gold cup semifinal. It'll also give Concacaf 3 teams in the KO stage. Suck on that!
Wow, the ball was swerving a bit (not a huge amount) and bounced in front of him (but not even that bad a bounce). That is a poor error. It was near enough the middle he could have had his body behind the ball, and obviously poor hands as well. Not like him, he is a good keeper.
The attendance was pretty poor and seemed to be nearly all Chileans, maybe the locals in Philly aren't too big on soccer. I thought Chile played very well and were largely comfortable, good team performance, good possession, good attacking. Sanchez best performance for quite a while. Panama not quite as good as I thought, slow to close down and sometimes positionally questionable and some holes in defence etc. I thought the second goal Bravo let in could have been prevented had he taken a step forward. He was practically right on his line. He needs to be a yard further forward. Goodbye Panama and will be interested too see how well they get on in the world cup qualification.
Bravo was terrible as I said. Chile could have kept a clean sheet but all Panama had to do was shoot on target and it was a goal.