Interliga: Atlas 4 – 1 America
By: Alan | January 11th, 2009
Wow, that is all that I can muster after seeing the 4-1 victory Atlas had over America. After a 3-1 loss to rival team Chivas, Atlas’ hopes of advancing in the Interliga and qualifying for the Libertadores seemed dead.
However, the operative word in that was “seemed” as Atlas showed all the nay sayers and even the wayward fans like myself that in football, anything is possible.
The odds were stacked against Atlas before the beginning of the game. With only 1 point and Chivas and America already at 4 the task seemed impossible: beat America and amass a better goal differential. Things were more complicated because Tigres could have also beat Chivas which would have put all 4 teams at 4 points with the deciding factor being the goal differential.
However, all of this seemed not to phase Atlas who left it all out on the field of the Home Depot Center. Things didn’t start of well for Atlas who received their first goal in the 3rd minute and had a lot of Atlas fans thinking “here we go again”. But we didn’t go there again, we went the opposite of here, we went there and in the 18th minute El Turbo started the scoring for Atlas and tied the game at 1-1.
Bruno Marioni gave the fans a taste of what was to come as he scored in the 35th minute to put Atlas within two goals of advancing in the tournament.
In stoppage time with a lead of 3-1 Atlas needed one goal to advance to the semifinals and time was no on their side. A minute and a half into stoppage time Marioni took control of the ball and charged towards the America goal, he fought and rebounded the ball all the way down the field where a lucky bounce positioned the ball in front of Achucarro who didn’t hesitate to strike the ball in the back of the net past a frozen Memo Ochoa. The stadium went crazy, Atlas had finished the miracle, in stoppage time they scored the goal that saw them through to the semifinals.
From these four only two will get a spot in the Libertadores and Atlas is one game away from returning to the competition where they did so well last year. The team and the fans are all riding a wave of momentum that they hope will give them victory today at 7 ET in the Home Depot Center against Pachuca, the team that Marioni left to return to Atlas.
AWANTE Atlas
Category: Atlas Team News
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