Superliga Matchday Five Blog

Superliga Match­day Five: Atlante– Guadalajara

Tele­fu­tura is claim­ing that this is a win­ner take all match so . If that’s the case Atlante is hang­ing on for dear life early in the sec­ond half. Chivas pilling on the pres­sure with every­thing on the line. I have to admit I am impressed by the Superliga rules. I like head to head in a com­pe­ti­tion like this trump­ing goal dif­fer­ence. If every­one plays every­one else and their are no draws, then why should goal dif­fer­ence mat­ter. So as I read it Hous­ton would win any three way tiebreaker on GD so they are auto­mat­i­cally the group cham­pion. Any result for Chivas means they win the group. If they lose Atlante holds the head to head advan­tage on them so Atlante advances. Con­fused? Don’t be, it’s what always hap­pens in groups where one team is hardly com­pet­i­tive and each of the other three have beaten them. We’ve seen it in World Cups, Copa America’s Euros, etc.

Back to the match. Despite an exces­sive amount of chances, the Goats can­not find the back of the net and Atlante has now given up try­ing to find a sec­ond goal and is defend­ing relent­lessly. Not that the Amer­i­can pub­lic would under­stand, but how often in Base­ball do you get drama like this down the stretch of a match? This is do or die for both clubs!

Ramon Morales is really spurn­ing on the Guadala­jara attack now. Chivas has so many chances and Atlante is hun­kered down. Than a great counter attack forces Luis Michel to make a great save and con­cedes a cor­ner. On the set piece, Ger­ardo Espinoza fin­ishes the game off to make it 2–0. Min­utes later after after Gon­zalo Pineda hits the post again for Chivas, Atlante coun­ters and almost scores if not for the hero­ism of Michel who for the sec­ond straight match in this com­pe­ti­tion is shook up. Arturo Munoz was sim­ply try­ing to casu­ally clean up a live ball after a Mal­don­ado shot and Michel hero­ically sac­ri­ficed his body and looks seri­ously injured.

An injury like this is awful to see in the dying min­utes of a thrilling match which has already been decided. Fol­low­ing the injury the life is sapped out of Chivas and they seem to be sim­ply play­ing out stop­page time. A valiant effort by the Goats who for the sec­ond straight Superliga entered the final group match against a fel­low Mex­i­can com­peti­tor only need­ing a draw to advance and instead los­ing and being elim­i­nated. Atlante comes back from los­ing the opener 4–0 and has advanced to the knock out stage of the 2008 Superliga.

First Half

Houston’s win over DC United has effec­tively elim­i­nated Atlante from advanc­ing unless the Can­cun based side beats Chivas by five goals. Assum­ing that does not hap­pen this match in front of a par­ti­san Chivas crowd at Buck Shaw Sta­dium has taken on the feel of a pre sea­son match which of course it is for these teams. How­ever this game has been a thriller again owing itself to what in gen­eral is the bet­ter tech­ni­cal abil­ity and tac­ti­cal skill of Mex­i­can play­ers when com­pared to all but the very best of their Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts. As is the case with most matches between Mex­i­can League teams, it’s very open and attack­ing ori­ented but not very phys­i­cal. Defend­ing as often is the case in both MLS and the Mex­i­can League is some­times very sus­pect, far below the stan­dard of a top Euro­pean league. Atlante scores a late first half goal and now needs only four more to advance. Beaten on the goal none other than Johnny Mag­a­l­lion whom I have referred to as the “Mex­i­can Car­los Bocane­gra” because his chief qual­i­fi­ca­tion for play­ing cen­ter back seems to be his abil­ity in the air on set pieces, and like Bocane­gra is gen­er­ally a lia­bil­ity in open play. Score the goal Gian­carlo Maldonado.

The way Atlante is play­ing and the announc­ers are speak­ing, maybe I’m wrong about goal dif­fer­ence deter­min­ing who advances. Maybe its head to head. If that’s the case, and Hous­ton has already effec­tively advanced, game on!

Superliga Match­day Five: DC United — Houston

Sec­ond Half

DC United makes a game of it with the fresh legs of Qua­vas Kirk whose con­stant injuries stopped the devel­op­ment of what at one time was one of the most promis­ing attack­ing play­ers in Amer­i­can Soc­cer. Kirk spurs DC for­ward to try and get some­thing from the match, and Fran­cis Doe scores a timely goal in the air. For a pre­cious few min­utes it seems like Hous­ton is on the ropes, but after Kirk hits the post with a screamer, the life falls out of United as the Dynamo score a won­der­ful counter attack­ing goal by Stu­art Holden who is headed to Palo Alto tomor­row to join the US Olympic Team. The rest of the match is spent by the Tele­fu­tura crew dis­cussing the US Olympic Team, indi­vid­ual by indi­vid­ual and their chances in Beijing.

First Half

The tour­na­ment will mer­ci­fully end for DC United tonight. The improb­a­ble sce­nario of a four goal United vic­tory com­bined with an Atlante loss is not worth dis­cussing. But I would expect United to come out and show some fight today.

As the first half pro­gresses it is obvi­ous that Hous­ton can name their score­line tonight. As has been the case through­out the Superliga, the back line of the red and black is a cou­ple steps slow and not read­ing the match at all. Rico Clark has put United out of its mis­ery with an early goal, but the chances keep com­ing for Hous­ton and in the cru­elest form of pun­ish­ment Bobby Boswell scores a goal against the man DC traded him for: the dis­in­ter­ested Zach Wells who fell asleep yet again. DC United lacks shape in the mid­field with Fred try­ing to hold things together and has quite play­ing at the back alto­gether. The embar­rass­ing per­for­mances don’t stop for United who seem to have mailed it on this tour­na­ment and will hope to get San­tino Quar­anta and Mar­cello Gal­lardo back as soon as possible.

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