Paranaense Should Put Chivas Away. (Emphasis on Should.)

By: Mauro | September 30th, 2008

Atlético Paranense vs. Club Deportivo Guadalajara “Chivas” (Estadio Joaquim Américo Guimarães “Arena da Baixada”, Curitiba, Brazil)

LIVE @ 5pm on Fox Sports Español. Gamecast here. Online TV here.

Last week, Chivas was unable to capitalize on the home field advantage and failed to create any sort of lead for themselves ahead of this week’s return leg in Curitiba. Paranaense, in the meantime, have created a nice padding for themselves in the away leg by scoring two valuable away goals, but the coach has since announced that they will make their starting XI available for the second leg as they had fielded an alternate squad made up of substitutes and youngsters for the first leg.

Paranaense coach Geninho has announced that he is planning on focusing on the Sudamericana this week and use his best available players for Tuesday night’s clash. Which is great for us observers but I’m not sure how all of you feel about this type of announcement but when I hear something like this, it makes me feel there is a streak of humiliation in it. Especially when the team squared against the wall is a Mexican one.

Still, Paranaense’s alternate side – in a match where they had only one regular starter available for that match – were able to turn the tables on the home team in Guadalajara with some help from opposing goal keeper, Sergio Rodriguez.

Paranaense are coming into this match with a 1-1 draw against their regional rival, Coritiba. The draw leaves Paranaense in 16th place with 27 points, far closer to the relegation zone than they probably want to be.

Paranaense can advance with a 0-0 draw or any result in their favor. However, should Chivas score 3 goals and beat them they could advance on the away goals as long as they win on aggregate. Basically, the Paranense defense need to keep Chivas to two goals or less and manage to score more than they do.

In danger of missing tonight’s match is Paranaense starting goal-keeper Galatto. He suffered an injury in the match at the weekend and he was substituted off. So if he is not recovered by match start time, Vinicius will see the Chivas forwards again as he’ll take the spot in goal for Paranaense.

Chivas will need their keeper to stay focused the full 90 minutes of the match in order to get a favorable result. In order to achieve this, coach Efrain Flores has announced that Hugo Hernández will start in goal. A favorable result will be difficult as they will need a 3-0 score line to advance in Brazil and the only team in this competition that could win a match of this magnitude is Boca Juniors and Chivas are no Boca Juniors. Especially not the way they have been playing.

They did manage to beat their cross town rivals, Atlas F.C., this past weekend and could give them some sort of momentum coming into this one tonight. This leaves Chivas with 13 points still 7 behind league leaders, San Luis Potosi, far from where they are expected to be at this point in the season.

Bottom Line: Chivas need a solid match tonight and a win by 3-0 to advance directly and save their asses. But it would be ridiculous to think that they could keep the home side from scoring in their own stadium. Plus, this Paranaense squad is a different one from the one they faced in Guadalajara last week. Which could be a good thing for the Brazilians or a bad thing depending on how this one turns out.

My Pick: 3-1 to Paranaense. Logic tells me that if last week’s Paranaense’s alternate squad was able to complicate Chivas than this week’s full starting XI should be able to finish them off with relative ease.

But then again, who could have predicted that Boca Juniors’ alternate side would spank LDU the way they did. This one could go either way, in my opinion, as neither team has shown any kind of dominance over another team in this competition. Not Chivas over Aragua F.C. nor Paranaense over São Paulo, who qualified on penalties and could easily be watching this one from their couch.

The winner of this one goes on to play the winner of the River Plate-Defensor Sporting Round of 16 match up. I’ll bet both of these teams are hoping that Paranaense pull this one out, since a long trip to Mexico is no fun for any team from South America.

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.