Boca Look to Get Back Into Their Series With Inter at Home.

By: Mauro | November 6th, 2008

Club Atlético Boca Juniors vs. Sport Club Internacional (Estadio Alberto J. Armando “La Bombonera”, Buenos Aires, Argentina)

LIVE @ 3pm PST on Fox Sports Español. Gamecast here. Online TV here.

With their eyes firmly on the Argentine Apertura title, Boca are “pulling a Palmeiras”, and fielding again, an alternate squad to host Internacional of Porto Alegre, who pulled together a 2-0 win over Boca in the first leg in Brazil. Inter have their best players available for this one, including Andrés D’Alessandro and Alex, who scored both goals for his team in the first leg.

While Boca will not be fielding their very best starting XI, instead they will be fielding an alternate side including various youngsters and substitutes who would make the first team on any other squad in Argentina.

Don’t fool yourselves, this isn’t a weak Boca team by any stretch. Reinforced with the likes of José Maria Calvo, Neri Cardozo, Luciano Figueroa and Leandro Gracián, Boca will also field wunder-kids Pablo Mouche (who’s thanking his lucky stars that Mauro Boselli went to Estudiantes so he could get a game with Boca) and surging Nicolás Gaitán.

Coach Carlos Ischia has said he’ll be benching, Juan Román Riquelme and red hot Lucas Viatri, (who has stepped up in the absence of club idol, Martín Palermo and has been scoring at will) for this one, should the goals not come as quickly as he’d like. Neither player was made available for the first leg in Porto Alegre.

So why aren’t Boca fielding their very best in this do or die match? Well, Boca are coming off a 1-0 win over league leaders San Lorenzo, a win that brings them level on points with San Lorenzo and Tigre all of which have 26 points. Boca are riding a 4 game win streak in the league, only recently rediscovering their form. So Boca is basically saving their best for the Aperura, a fight they are right in the middle of.

Boca are looking to score at least three goals and concede none. Any kind of draw or loss qualifies Inter to the Semi-finals.

Across the pitch, Inter are coming into this one off a 0-3 loss to league leaders, São Paulo, in the Brasileirao. A competition that they find themselves in 9th place with 48 points (which most likely means we’ll see them here in Copa Sudamericana ‘09), 24 points off the league leaders. They face bottom dwellers, Ipatinga, this coming weekend so they can really use their best players available in this match.

Coach Tité is looking to count on his best players in the first leg, D’Alessandro and Alex, but is also happy to have Pablo Guiñazú back and ready to play. Tité will likely field Magrao over Guiñazú but don’t be surprised to see the former Newell’s Old Boys midfielder on the pitch from the start.

Also, keep in mind that Inter’s first win in the Sudamericana came in the first leg of this series. They drew all four previous matches, eliminating both Universidad Católica and bitter rivals Gremio on away goals.

Bottom Line: Boca’s alternate side hasn’t been the same since the Round of 16 match against LDU Quito. They had trouble in the first leg against the Brazilian side and didn’t show the brilliant play they exhibited then. Inter have yet to truly show the talent this side has and could possibly be. They have great players but have yet to create a solid team from them (Their record in this competition clearly shows that). This one is more evenly matched than it appears since Boca will have the home field advantage in the closing leg.

My Pick: 3-1 to Boca. Boca miraculously score three goals and appear to be through but fail to keep one out. Inter advance to face the winner of the Chivas-River series.

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 an updated one here.