Nacional and Millonarios played the best game of the semester, they delivered, attacked, pleased, made mistakes, scored goals and overcame arbitration controversies. But the award went to Alberto Gamero’s team, which, with a 2-2 win at the Atanasio Girardot, is very well placed in its intention to qualify for the final.
The game was crazy in the first 15 minutes. Nacional scored three goals and was losing 0-1… Not two minutes had gone by when Jarlan Barrera broke Álvaro Montero’s goal. But after reviewing the VAR, referee Carlos Ortega annulled the scorer’s offside play.
The controversial play of the match: was it a goal for Nacional?
At 7 minutes, Nacional put the ball back in the Millonarios goal: Montero had two terrible starts in which he did not take advantage of his height. In the second, he went to fight without decision for a ball with Jéfferson Duque, who anticipated it with his head and on the rebound, Emanuel Olivera put it in. But first the VAR and then Ortega considered that there was a lack of Nacional’s ‘9’. It didn’t seem like it, really.
And at 13 minutes, a ball fell into the Nacional area and Yerson Candelo jumped to head very badly and ended up putting the ball into his own goal. Millionaires had a bad time, Nacional overwhelmed him and yet he left the first quarter of an hour with an advantage.
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The following minutes were something else, when Nacional lost the intensity with which the game had started and Millonarios wanted to validate the advantage they had gained on the field in the game. And they were the best minutes of the Gamero team, with Daniel Ruiz and Mackalister Silva on fire, with Larry Vásquez taking away and supporting, with the young Carlos Gómez feasting on the band and even with Diego Herazo involved in the circuit.
But that dominance of Millionaires could not translate into more goals. The clearest was Gómez, after a brilliant pass from Silva: he wanted to put it in with a cross shot and it went wide for very little.
The blues forgave. The greens did not: at 41, Daniel Mantilla, the only one who always maintained the intensity and level in the first stage, overflowed on the right and threw a cross. Barrera, who had been missing, anticipated Elvis Perlaza and tied the game.
And one more was missing, this one in favor of Millonarios, in replacement time, when Diego Herazo wanted to knock the ball and Olivera stretched to get the ball out of the line: he celebrated it more than the goal that was disallowed.
The second half continued to be heads up, but with less intensity from side to side. Of course, both had it to have taken advantage. Millonarios did it first, hitting the ball twice on the post in the same play, after five minutes: first, Larry Vásquez, with a header, and then Silva, on the rebound, throwing himself to the ground only to send the ball to the same place.
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Those of Nacional arrived with a Millonarios played in a rival field, trying to get the ball from the bottom. In both, the same protagonists, Dorlan Pabón in the auction and Álvaro Montero to avoid the group of a full stadium, which dyed the air green.
Shot with good football and great goals
But it was Millonarios who dyed the marker blue, in an extraordinary counterattack: Ómar Bertel recovered a ball in his area, passed it to Vásquez, Vásquez to Silva, Silva to Sosa, Sosa again to Mackálister, who raised his head and saw Daniel Ruiz enter, who, with time and space to solve, defined with class. Great goal, at 29 minutes.
The dominance and joy did not last long for Millonarios: the third intervention of the VAR proved him right and 2-2 to Nacional: Sebastián Gómez tried to finish off, the ball hit a rival and fell to Ruyery Blanco, who seemed ahead. The touch to the center was for Yeison Guzmán, who beat Montero. All legal: Elvis Perlaza enabled Blanco.
Already Millonarios was more cautious and after the 2-2, José Cuenú came on for Mackalister. But he got far behind and Nacional tried to score the third. He almost found it by the same route in which he started losing, a detour in Pereira that made the goalkeeper Montero demand.
Millonarios has not lost with Nacional in Medellín since September 2017 and maintained that streak at the best moment: he continues as leader and now he will have to revalidate that on Saturday in Barranquilla, against Junior.
Jose Orlando Ascencio
Sports Sub-Editor
@josasc
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