Superliga Matchday Four: Chivas USA — Santos Laguna

Sec­ond Half

San­tos fail­ure to fin­ish even one of their numer­ous chances has encour­aged Preki to bring Jesse Marsch and Ante Razov both on at half­time. Chivas USA is no doubt now chas­ing 3 points! Still for Chivas it seems it will take some­thing spe­cial to Oswaldo Sanchez while San­tos seems to have used all their energy in the first half. The entrance of Jorge Flo­res in minute 63 brings an applause from the crowd and more hope that Chivas USA can cre­ate the nec­es­sary space and qual­ity down the flank to win this match. After a sus­pect off­sides against San­tos, Chivas USA comes back and takes the lead through a won­der goal from Ante Razov who has now scored if I count cor­rectly the last five goals the Goats have scored in all competitions.

After the Chivas goal, San­tos again as they did ear­lier in the match begins to pile on some pres­sure. Dan Kennedy makes a great one handed save around minute 84, but then San­tos draws a free kick and scores what appears to be a text­book goal. How­ever ref­eree Court­ney Camp­bell con­tro­ver­sially waves it off. This draws the throw­ing of objects on the pitch by the San­tos fans, but Chivas uses this call to hold on to the victory.

First Half

This match is as open as the ear­lier match tonight was tac­ti­cal. Some peo­ple enjoy back and forth foot­ball, but for me it indi­cates poor defend­ing and sloppy mid­field play. This match has been full of it, and San­tos missed sev­eral golden oppor­tu­ni­ties to score first most notably on Chris­t­ian Benitez’s unbe­liev­able miss after he had drib­bled past Dan Kennedy and had an open goal to shot at. the game goes back and forth with lots of oppor­tu­ni­ties and a good crowd this is an excit­ing match. Chivas USA is play­ing a largely reserve side with­out Jesse Marsch, Ante Razov and Clau­dio Suarez. Sacha Kljes­tan is play­ing what is likely to be his game for a while as he will be named to the US Olympic Squad tomor­row. This first half has been bizarre with count­less chances both ways but some truly awful tech­ni­cal and mid­field play along with two sets of defend­ers that seem com­pletely lost.