Estudiantes Look to Carve Out a Nice Lead in Tonight’s Match.

By: Mauro | November 27th, 2008

Sorry, I had a rough Wednesday and couldn’t upload the preview for last night’s match. So here it is, no photo though. Again, sorry. I will be posting the match report in a few minutes.

Estudiantes de La Plata vs. Sport Club Internacional (Estadio Unico de La Plata, La Plata, Argentina)

LIVE @ 3:30pm PST on Fox Sports Español. Gamecast here. Online TV here. If we’re lucky, the Mexicans will not be announcing

Well in case you’ve been under a rock or overwhelmed with UEFA Champions League action, tonight there is quite a big match taking place in South America. Estudiantes de La Plata, with an unbeaten record at home, are hosting Internacional de Porto Alegre in the first leg of the Finals of the Copa Sudamericana.

Estudiantes coach Leonardo Astrada’s side has advanced in this cup due to their positive performances at home against every side they faced in this competition. Both coach and players know that in order to advance to the next round they will need to take care of business at home since Inter’s record at home is also pretty respectable, most notably, in their last two matchups.

Estudiantes are coming off a win at the weekend in the Argentine Apertura, 2-0 over second place side, Tigre, and are looking to have a few changes to their line up. Leandro Desábato is back after a suspension where he’ll take Cristian Cellay’s place and Matías Sanchez will be replacing Rodrigo Braña, who was sent off against Argentinos in their 1-0 Semi-final win, last week.

Inter coach Tité decided he would rest his starters this past weekend and as a result all his best players are healthy and available for tonight’s match. We should see the exact same side tonight that beat Chivas 4-0 in Porto Alegre.

The coach is pretty confident about his side’s chances of coming away with a positive result in La Plata. While he did mention that the team had been trying out different formations and practicing dead ball plays, he also said that he would be trying to maintain the team’s form for regularities sake.

Bottom Line: Inter have shown to be a very organized side. Say what you will, but they handled themselves like a top flight side against the likes of Boca Juniors and Chivas. Estudiantes have employed and more defensive and unattractive style of football for their most recent matches but they can be explosive on the offensive end as well. It would seem that these two are pretty evenly matched.

My Pick: 2-1 to Inter. Estudiantes are able to score tonight but they are not able to keep Inter from sinking two in. Inter are a more organized side and look sharper coming into this one. And who doesn’t want offensive, fun-to-watch football to win?

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.