San Luis Win But Argentinos Get the Away Goal.

By: Mauro | September 25th, 2008

San Luis was the favorite, in my eyes, coming into this one. Argentinos was coming in from behind and from the looks of this match it looked like they were going to go down three goals before the end of the first half. But near the end of the match Argentinos rallied and gave San Luis fans quite the scare.

Basically, this match went pretty much how I expected. Tressor Moreno played a fantastic match where he would double back to get a touch or two on the ball and fought to open spaces in the Argentinos defense. He also combined well with his teammates Marcelo Guerrero and Braulio Luna. His well placed free kick gave San Luis their first goal of the match. A cross from the right and a leaping Braulio Luna gets a head to it and scores. 1-0 to San Luis.

San Luis continued it’s domination of the match and was able to net it’s second goal near the end of the first half. Off a broken play, Tressor Moreno gets the ball near the top of the area and is able to place the ball past Argentinos keeper Sebastián Torrico. 2-0 to San Luis and the rout seemed like it was on.

But good on them to create plenty of offense, enough to really put this match out of reach. What they were missing was a Juventus style finish. They got the lead but couldn’t keep Argentinos from surging in the second half.

Substitute Andrés Romero had two clear opportunities to score and botched both. But the true great moment on the night came when Nicolás Pavlovich juke a marker on a run into the penalty and was all alone to score off a nice shot that went across the goal. 2-1 to San Luis and the away goal was in the bag.

Final Score: 2-1 to San Luis.

Argentinos came from behind and had the draw within their reach in the final ten minutes. They cornered San Luis in their penalty area and almost made them pay on various plays. With a little more aim they could have draw level and gone home with two away goals. But the damage was done and San Luis will really have to make an effort in the away match next week.

Next week’s stage? La Paternal, Buenos Aires. One thing’s for sure, San Luis will not make the same mistake of fielding a few substitutes like they did against Deportivo Quito.

I had this one going 3-1 to San Luis but I could never have guessed they would have a man go off with a red card. I figured that San Luis would win and that Argentinos would get an away goal and that much was right. But I was wrong to think that Argentinos was two goals worse that San Luis. I’ll be much more generous to them in the second leg.

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.