Superliga Matchday Six: New England, Pachuca Advance

Pachuca-Santos 

With New Eng­land and Chivas USA draw­ing, Pachuca the defend­ing Superliga Cham­pi­ons need only a draw to advance to the knock out stages of the com­pe­ti­tion. Stand­ing in their way are Osvaldo Sanchez and the reign­ing Mex­i­can Clausura Cham­pi­ons San­tos Laguna who must feel hard done by some of the offi­ci­at­ing and bad bounces of the ball they received on Wednes­day night ver­sus Chivas USA.

Sec­ond Half

San­tos has come out with an attack­ing intent but with­out any sort of shape and with some ter­ri­ble spac­ing. In addi­tion a lack of ideas in the final third has me think­ing Pachuca may not even have to work to get the point they need to advance. This script plays out for the first twenty five min­utes of the half but then Chris­t­ian Ben­itez, the goat against Chivas USA scores and all of a sud­den Pachuca is hold­ing on for dear life.

Fer­nando Arce has taken over this match and his skill is lead­ing San­tos for­ward while Pachuca minus Chris­t­ian Gimenez is con­tin­u­ing to fight. This last por­tion of the match has been arguably as good as any action in the Superliga espe­cially given what is at stake, the two sides involved and the impec­ca­ble qual­ity of the pitch. Pachuca actu­ally cre­ates some chances and gets the draw needed to advance. As always Pachuca knows what it must do to stay alive in these com­pe­ti­tions and advance to face the Hous­ton Dynamo in the semi­fi­nal of a major com­pe­ti­tion for the third time in the last two years.

First Half

Pachuca doesn’t waste any­time push­ing for­ward and get­ting the vital first goal thanks to Damian Alvarez. As the half wears on the expe­ri­enced Pachuca mid­field who has together won so many matches of this impor­tance asserts their influ­ence on the match. San­tos goes for­ward often but seems open to counter attack­ing. Bruno Mar­i­oni in par­tic­u­lar is get­ting a num­ber of chances. Towards the end of the half San­tos does well to get set piece oppor­tu­ni­ties and comes oh so close to an equal­izer a few times but still no breakthrough.

Superliga Match­day Six: Chivas USA — New England

Fullerton’s Titan sta­dium is the venue for a clash that will deter­mine who will win Group B of Superliga. New Eng­land merely needs a draw to win the group, Chivas a vic­tory and a Pachuca loss or draw. The win­ner of this match is guar­an­teed pas­sage to the next round. For the loser, elim­i­na­tion is not cer­tain but nor is pas­sage. Should be a great night of foot­ball from Superliga 2008.

Sec­ond Half

After an early attempt by Sainey Nyassi on goal and a good save by Dan Kennedy, Chivas once again takes con­trol of the match with New Eng­land look­ing tired from their heroic ordeal on board an Amer­i­can Air­lines flight the other day and the Revs get burned by Ante Razov’s sixth goal in six games. Inci­den­tally no other Chivas player has scored in the last month.

New Eng­land begins to push guys for­ward and makes two tac­ti­cal changes leav­ing them­selves exposed at the back. But given New England’s qual­ity and abil­ity to con­trol matches this sea­son, do we really expect Chivas USA to win this match? I cer­tainly don’t but right now am being proven wrong. Hon­estly, New Eng­land is likely to score at any point. Shal­rie Joseph and Ste­vie Ral­ston were both quiet in the first half but now they seem to want to assert them­selves on this match and as we know when they both are play­ing well, the Revs are tough to beat.

New Eng­land con­tin­ues to use slow, patient build up to cre­ate chances and finally they score a goal on a nice Ral­ston cor­ner right to Joseph’s head. Dan Kennedy prob­a­bly could have saved the shot, but hon­estly I think the man mark­ing was really poor by Chivas on the corner.

Now that it’s tied and Joseph and Ral­ston are play­ing well, I expect New Eng­land to kill this game off hold­ing the ball as much as pos­si­ble and giv­ing Chivas very lit­tle pos­ses­sion. As it turns out Chivas gets more pos­ses­sion than I expected but it wasn’t exactly good pos­ses­sion and New Eng­land as expected gets the draw and advances as Group B Cham­pi­ons. The Goats now await their fate: a Pachuca win or draw ver­sus San­tos Laguna and they are elim­i­nated. A San­tos win allows Chivas to advance to face Hous­ton. San­tos Laguna has been eliminated.

First Half

Not much to say about this first half other than this match is pro­vid­ing us with very lit­tle in the way of good foot­ball. Matt Reis made the play of the first half with a div­ing save on a nice left footed shot by Jesse Marsch while New England’s best chance came via a won­der­ful through ball from Shal­rie Joseph to Kheli Dube which left Dube in space poten­tially one on one with Dan Kennedy, but Dube had an awful touch and the ball went over the touch line harm­lessly for a goal kick. New England’s back line has been poor while Chivas has con­trolled the mid­field but run out of ideas in the final third.