We have to be thankful that Pablo Escobar came through at the end with two nice goals. Otherwise those two matches today would have been the most boring 180 minutes in Copa Libertadores history.
Maybe, but the last 30 minutes of the first-leg was pretty entertaining. I don't know if I ever saw it rain as hard anywhere as it did tonight in La Paz.
You mean the game last week? I was talking about the two games played today. Huracán vs Alianza Lima followed by The Strongest vs Morelia.
I saw the first half of the Huracan match was pretty entertaining. Huracan could have easily scored after 40 seconds when they hit the post, and the Allianza keeper had a few more saves to pull off. There was also the bizarre protest by the Allianza players at kick-off after being threatened and assaulted by the Barras. It was also wild to see the chaos going on in the visitor's end. the normal fans were scattering due to some sort of violence generated by the barras. it was utter chaos but the fox cameras never showed what was actually happened
Yeah, the protest from the Alianza players had entertainment value. Never seen anything like that, I was thinking, what the ********? Huracán had their chances, but for the most part let them off the hook. They could have scored easily, but they played it conservatively and let the minutes pass without a sense of urgency. That tijera would have been a golazo, though. I was mostly pissed because I picked them to win in El Mas Sabio.
Oh right, I totally misread your post. Thought you meant the two legs of the The Strongest - Morelia tie. ^^ haha... I just wrote a grammatically correct sentence that has the word 'the' back-to-back.
Táchira bunkering like there's no tomorrow in the Defensores del Chaco... still 0-0, the Venezuelans with advantage after the 2-1 in the Templo Sagrado. PS: Dubious penalty given to Cerro. 1-0.
Anyone watching this in America with Fox Sports? Good moment there when the commentator called Middlesborough "Middlesburg".
My god I went to buy some stuff, come back, and it's 2-2. Táchira showing a lot of nerve. Cerro in big trouble, needs two more.
Qué equipo sin ideas, qué pasivo, qué amarrado, qué aburrido San Lorenzo. River les gana bien, y muestra cómo el ultimo campeón de la Libertadores nunca tuvo mucho. Con diez, River genera mucho más fútbol. Y Once Caldas no le pudo ganar a un Corinthians que ya ni trataba. 4 a 0 era suficiente.
La Libertadores del año pasado fue una aberración. Este año creo que se vuelve a la normalidad, con unos cuantos equipos bien armados que van a dar pelea.
Atletico Mineiro fue peor. Ganaron cada partido por penales con un gol a los ultimos minutos y despues perdio contra los des marruecos.
The odds are against CASLA will making it out of the group stage. It's partly my Brazilian bias, but SPFC has made a few key acquisitions and Corinthians, a crosstown rival, has brought Tite back and they're confident now after defeating Palmeiras at Palmeiras and blasting Once Caldas. Unless CASLA's roster has been overhauled, CASLA will have a very tough time in the group stage. Velez Sarsfield was a fine team - I was shocked it lost to Nacional of Paraguay. Ditto with Newell's - I can't believe they lost so badly to Atl. Nacional at home in their final game. Cruzeiro and Grêmio could have done far better. CASLA will not win it again this year. CARP, your archrival, looks like a serious candidate. Brazil's teams have decent chances. I wouldn't agree. Atl.-MG did have those lucky moments, but at least in terms of group stage performance, Atl.-MG was a machine who beat everybody in its path. CASLA debuted last year's group stage with a loss.
San Lorenzo was much worse than Atletico Mineiro. First of all- CASLA only qualified for the Copa with 33 points- the worst team to ever win the argentine league in the short tournament era. They tied their last 6 games to get in, but they were surrounded by other teams that choked away the tournament. Newell's in particular. Trezeguet missing a penalty against Tigre was unbelievable, and Lanus and Velez as well. Here in Argentina is lots of talking of how the final game of the group stage between Union Española vs. Independiente del Valle and CASLA vs. Botafogo was all rigged, and considering what happened in the closing stages of those matches, its not far fetched. Botafogo's players' also hadn't been paid for months and basically gave the match to CASLA not even trying to close down Piatti as he ran through on goal various times. It was farcical
I remember that. It's unthinkable that in the Brazilian league, a team would draw its final six games and still win the tournament. My country's premiership is so competitive that in the last few rounds, it turns into a frenzied race to see who is going to win (unless it's like last year when Cruzeiro was ahead of the pack by far) and who will make it to the Libertadores. A single draw can mean doom. Consecutive draws can get managers fired. Botafogo played very pooly in that final match. They were a shell of the team that vigorously marked and attacked CASLA in Rio when that group stage began. In your country, Botafogo played for a draw, but it stayed behind, not pressing nor marking CASLA's players. CASLA went for the all-or-nothing and scored. Botafogo barely created anything and later in the game its manager deployed 3 forwards, with Bolatti in midfield and Tanque Ferreyra (the Argentine who scored for Botafogo. But Botafogo overall had no attitude - they effectively gave up, despite a few efforts here and there. CASLA on the other hand smelled blood and went for the kill.
San Lorenzo won it regardless. Atletico Mineiro didn't even win the Brazilian league. A good champion must be strong all around in the tournament. San Lorenzo was lucky to get through when Del Valle beat Union 5-4, however they beat Bolivar 5-0, got an ideal result in Paraguay in the final against Nacional, won against the Brazilian champions, and beat Gremio who walked the group of death. After San Lorenzo won, they went to the Club World Cup to barely beat a semi-professional side who was massively overachieving and then got a fair enough result against Real Madrid, a team who was beating everyone at the moment by more than 4 goals. Atletico Mineiro were good in the groups, and in the first knockout round but got lucky afterwards and lost every game away from home. They then barely got a win in the recopa, and couldn't even beat the Morrocans. They also did poorly in the league after winning the cup. San Lorenzo did as well, but Atletico Mineiro just fell apart, and once Bernard left for Europe no one except Tardelli performed well ever again. San Lorenzo were poor in the final in Argentina, yes, but to say they are a worst champion than Mineiro is baffling to me.
Yours are quite peculiar criteria. First, you say that not winning the local league takes away from the credit of the given team when it wins the subsequent Libertadores. That means Estudiantes in 2009 loses credit for its Libertadores win since it was not only the defending champion of its league but it also had to compete in the playoff round - a round it reached only because it had "2nd best average of the 2007 Apertura, 2008 Clausura, & 2008 Apertura." The next year, Internacional won the Libertadores despite not being the reigning Brazilian champion. Yet it won that Copa justly, even though along the way it knocked out my own team, SPFC. In 2011, Santos was not the Brazilian champion. It got to the Libertadores by being the 2010 Copa do Brasil winner. In Brazil, when a team wins the Libertadores, it often has a modest league performance, because it's already qualified for the following Libertadores, and as important as the league is, its participation in the next year's league is assured as long as the team isn't relegated. Doing poorly in the league after winning the Libertadores doesn't necessarily mean the team is bad - at least not in Brazil. Perhaps in Argentina, as CASLA finished in 8th place last year, with 26 points (15 lower than eventual champion Racing)... but not in Brazil. Only Corinthians in 2012, as Libertadores winner, was the defending champion of Brazil, but that doesn't happen every year, as I've made clear. Atl.-MG did fluctuate from the group stage to the knockout stages in 2013, but those PK saves are part of the game. And while Atl.-MG had an embarrassing result against the African side, the fact that as you said, CASLA barely beat a team of brave amateurs was eye-opening. I've got nothing against CASLA and it deserves credit for 2014's achievements, but they were an inferior side as champions to Atl.-MG. That Argentine posters here, the very people who grew up closely following the league to which CASLA belongs, are openly saying CASLA's title campaign last year was an aberration says it all.
I'm not sure if you're being serious or sarcastic, but for those whose first language is Portuguese, written Spanish isn't that difficult to understand.
It's not sarcastic. And yeah, I can also understand Portuguese quite well, especially in writing. The pronunciation throws me off a bit. But I can understand Brazilians better than people from Portugal.
That hardly makes you strange given that many Brazilians struggle to understand Portuguese people. I've gone to Portuguese restaurants on the east coast where the waiters speak in a way I barely get and I speculate they don't understand me easily either. It's incredible how a language can sound so different even though it's only a little different in writing. Spaniards, Mexicans, and Argentines all sound very distinct from each other. A funny one for you... years ago Brazil went to Portugal for a friendly. A fan asked Ronaldo (the Brazilian one) for an autograph. After signing, the middle-aged man said, "obrigado! Meu put0 vai ficar muito contente." Ronaldo stared awkwardly until someone whispered to him, "Em Portugal, 'put0' significa 'filho' (hijo)."