Monterrey beats Puebla to advance in Interliga
No one wins when a game ends with the score tied. But no one loses either, which was the perfect scenario for Monterrey in Sunday’s final game of group play in the seventh Interliga soccer tournament at the Home Depot Center.
Needing only to avoid a one-sided loss to unbeaten Puebla to advance to the tournament finals, Monterrey turned conservative to protect a second-half tie. Yet, it emerged with a 2-1 victory anyway when Osvaldo Martinez scored a minute into extra time.
In Wednesday’s championship round, Monterrey, winner of the Mexican Clausura season, will meet Group A champion Club America of Mexico City at 8:30 p.m. Puebla, the Group B winner, will play Jalisco’s Estudiantes Tecos at 6.
The winner of each game will represent Mexico in the Copa Libertadores, Latin America’s version of Europe’s Championships League.
So Sunday’s win will mean nothing, defender Severo Meza said, if Monterrey can win Wednesday.
“We came here with the intention of going to the Libertadores,” Meza said.
Puebla clinched its berth in the finals last week so it had little to play for Sunday, a point it proved by resting veteran forward Alvaro Gonzalez and keeping Carlos Ruiz, the team’s top scorer, on the sidelines until the 72nd minute. Despite that, Puebla jumped in front in the fifth minute when Juan Carlos Garcia scored at the end of a pretty give-and-go worked by Orlando Rincon and Sergio Rosas.
Monterrey, which had no offense to speak of for most of the first half, got a gift to even things when Roberto Carlos Juarez tripped Sergio Santana in the penalty area in the 33rd minute, setting up a penalty kick that captain Luis Ernesto Perez converted.
And with a tie good enough to send it to the finals, Monterrey spent part of the second half protecting that score, drawing jeers from a crowd announced at 9,373. The jeers turned to cheers in extra time, though, when Martinez, a 23-year-old Paraguayan, slipped behind the defense and rocketed a shot over a surprised Alexandro Alvarez.
Ironically, Martinez may not have played Sunday had Duillo Davino not received a yellow card in the 64th minute. Not wanting to lose Davino for the finals to a second yellow card, Coach Victor Manuel Vucetich replaced him with Martinez.
“It was difficult. Puebla is a motivated team,” forward Aldo De Nigris said. “But our objective was just to get to the next round.”
In the first game of Sunday’s doubleheader, neither Tigres UANL of Monterrey nor Jaguares of Chiapas could afford to lose if they hoped to keep alive their slim chances of advancing. And neither did, playing to a 2-2 tie that wound up meaning nothing when Monterrey won the second game.
Goals by Argentine Lucas Lobos in the sixth minute and Brazilian Itamar Batista in the 29th minute gave Tigres a 2-0 lead.
But Jaguares pulled even by the half on scores by Ezequiel Orozco and Edgar Andrade, the second coming in extra time on a hard shot over goalkeeper Cirilo Saucedo from 20 meters.
A chippy second half that featured six yellow cards -- three for each team -- couldn’t break the tie, though it wasn’t for a lack of trying, with Jaguares getting off 18 shots in the game.
