Argentinos Defends Their Ground.

By: Mauro | August 7th, 2008

Video not available for this one. Sorry. I searched high and low and no luck. Please feel free to post a link to the goals if you have one and I’ll be happy to include it in the post if possible. Either way, we’re not missing much.

Definitely not the match I thought it was going to be. I had hoped for a few goals, plenty of goal scoring opportunities and perhaps an appearance or two from San Lorenzo striker Gonzalo Bergessio but what I got instead was a midfield battle as beautiful as something out of Lord of the Rings.

In the first half, we got one dangerous play and about 15 fouls to stop play when it got interesting. The one dangerous play came when Argentinos Juniors’ midfielder Sergio Escudero found Gabriel Peñalba in the middle of the penalty area and Peñalba’s strike was sent to the corner by San Lorenzo keeper, Agustín Orión.

San Lorenzo strikers Bernardo Romeo and Gonzalo Bergessio were non factors in the first half where it seemed Argentinos was able to get plenty of possession in the midfield with Rodrigo “El Rengo” Diáz pulling the strings from the Argentinos midfield to the edge of the San Lorenzo penalty area. But San Lorenzo was hell bent on taking down Argentinos players and dragging the match into the mud.

The second half was more of the same. With Argentinos heading forward and San Lorenzo seeming to be more dedicated to destroying play than creating it. Early on, Juan Sabia had a chance off a corner but Orión dove to his left and kept the score level.

Bergessio crossed a ball diagonally into the penalty area and it went off of Nestór Ortigoza’s arm but it was clearly unintentional. Instead San Lorenzo kept on with their strategy and that earned all their defenders a yellow card.

Argentinos midfield playmakers crumbled slowly under the San Lorenzo pressure and their own fatigue.

The last 15 minutes were the best part of the match. Lots of back and forth with the plays extending to both penalty areas. But without clear chances on goal, the match ended 0-0. Overall, a snooze-fest.

I had this one ending 1-1 but that was because I thought there would be some scoring. But 0-0 is a perfect representation of what this match had to offer.

Argentinos has the greatest advantage with this result since they could manage an away goal, they could tie 1-1 and still advance. San Lorenzo looked grim and like they sorely missed D’Alessandro’s playmaking abilities.

Feel free to check the CONMEBOL website for results and information about upcoming matches and for those of you in need of a bracket to get your heads around the competition, get one here.