Mexico’s Club Morelia Shuts Out El Salvador in Exhibition Soccer
Mario Juarez scored the game’s only goal in the first period as Club Morelia of Mexico withstood a series of second-half El Salvador threats and held on for a 1-0 exhibition soccer victory Thursday in front of 8,633 fans at Santa Ana Stadium.
Juarez’s goal highlighted a first half in which Morelia used a swarming, aggressive defense to preserve its lead.
Juarez gave Morelia its lead with 24 minutes gone when he took a pass from Mario Diaz deep in the El Salvador penalty area and fired a low shot past goalie Ricardo Mora.
The goal came four minutes after Morelia’s Fernando Bernal missed a scoring bid when El Salvador’s Fernando Lazo and Nelson Portillo combined on a save of his low, driving shot.
El Salvador, which was quiet for most of the first half, tried desperately to tie the score in the second half but was unable to do so as time ran out.
The match was the first in a series of six international exhibition competitions presented in conjunction with the Camel World Class Soccer Series. El Salvador’s next contest will be Aug. 31 against Brazil at the Coliseum. Morelia will start first-round play in the series’ North American tournament against Saprissa of Costa Rica Aug. 7 at San Jose.
Morelia missed two other scoring chances in the first period. The first came with 11 minutes left when Mora made a diving stop of Juarez’s low pass in front of the goal. The second came with four minutes remaining when a Diaz goal was nullified by a hand-ball violation called against Morelia.
Besides controlling the first-half offensive play, Morelia also limited El Salvador to two long, harmless shots in the half.
El Salvador wasn’t without its share of second-half offensive opportunities. One chance came with 15 minutes gone when Osmel Zapata broke away from the Morelia defense and kicked a low shot. But Morelia goalie Jorge Pina, drawn to the edge of the penalty area, made the save.
Pina, who entered the game in the second half, stopped two other El Salvador attempts midway through the period when he made diving saves of shots by Salvador Coreas.
Later, he was caught out of position when Zapata lofted a shot just over his diving save attempt. But as the ball was rolling toward the Morelia net, Morelia defender Ricardo Campos kicked it away from the goal and out of bounds.
El Salvador got one final chance to score with less than a minute left in the game when Lazo attempted a close-in, line-drive angle shot. Lazo’s shot, however sailed just wide of the Morelia net as Morelia then proceeded to kick the ball out of its zone as time ran out.
