Superliga Matchday Two: Chivas USA-Pachuca

Sec­ond Half:

Fewer ref­er­ences to Sven from this Tele­fu­tura crew. Maybe that’s because Pachuca is a largely South Amer­i­can team and Sven is spend­ing his time on the east coast it seems in this tour­na­ment. Sven did look comfy in the press box in Foxbor­ough. I assume he’ll be back there for another Superliga match.

Pachuca begins to main­tain pos­ses­sion well early the half cre­at­ing a free kick opporunity just out­side the box quickly and a few scor­ing chances. Lance Parker looks set­tled and makes two spec­tac­u­lar saves: one on Gabriel Cab­ballero, the sym­bol of the aging Pachuca from my mouth and another in the dying min­utes. But Chivas can­not sus­tain their pos­ses­sion or cre­ate really good chances save an out­stand­ing header from Ante Razov which Calero dealt with. Chivas looked gassed as the game con­tin­ued and the fresh legs that Preki inserted which were mostly young inex­pe­ri­enced play­ers (with the notable excep­tion of Jim Curtin) looked lively and attack­ing minded but not sea­soned or patient enough to break a team as expe­ri­enced as Pachuca.  A game effort from Chivas but just not enough class.

First Half

My CSRN col­legue Peter Brown reports from the Home Depot Cen­ter that Lance Parker will start the match in goal ahead of Dan Kennedy, the Chilean league vet­eran who has played once for Chivas and looked out of place in a loss to RSL. Parker has never played in a pro­fes­sional match. Brad Guzan was sold to Aston Villa last week. This is a huge risk for Preki to take in this match but Peter has pre­vi­ously reported that Preki was not impressed by Kennedy in train­ing or in that match ver­sus RSL.

Preki has started Jonathan Born­stein in the mid­field on the left side and right away he cre­ates a great chance for Sacha Kljes­tan. Preki’s side has come out with lots of fight and attack­ing intent tonight. A con­tro­ver­sial hand ball call leads to a penalty kick where Clau­dio Suarez sends Miguel Calero the wrong way but hits the post. Min­utes later Chivas’ build up and con­trol of the match is solid­i­fied with a won­der­ful goal from Ante Razov, one of the true greats of Amer­i­can club foot­ball. Pachuca comes back thanks to a strange foul call near the touch line which infu­ri­ated Preki. The ensu­ing free kick taken by Ger­ardo Rodriguez finds Bruno Mar­i­oni who even at 33 looks like he’s not as “old and tired” as claimed on the Superliga Pre­view Spe­cial. Chivas con­trols the match from that point for­ward and scores a sec­ond goal thanks to Rodriguez again find­ing and even “older and tired” Caballero, whom I pre­vi­ously named as the sym­bol of the aging Pachuca in the MLS Talk pre­view show #1 for this tour­na­ment. Note to myself: never dis­re­spect the king.

In the sec­ond half Chivas must regain the ini­tia­tive they showed in the first fif­teen min­utes of the match. The LA side was clever, and never at a loss for ideas early. Despite his inex­pe­ri­ence and allow­ing two goals, Lance Parker has looked com­fort­able in goal though a  half step slow to react, reaf­firm­ing thus far Preki’s faith in him when com­pared to what Dan Kennedy showed in his prior out­ing ver­sus RSL. Maybe in the sec­ond half we’ll see more pos­ses­sion from Chivas and an atempt to force Pachuca’s agin­ing and tired legs to be run off?