The lack of goals ended up severely punishing Millonarios, who once again failed at the key moment of the championship, knowing that the Colombian League system gives the highest prize to the one who does things best in the last eight games, and leaves the top 20 only as a tiebreaker.
In five semi-final matches, Millonarios only scored four goals, two of them in moving play.
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The other two were a much-discussed penalty against Bucaramanga, scored by Diego Herazo, and an own goal by Yerson Candelo. in the match against Nacional, in Medellín. But there are other factors that ended up affecting a campaign in which he ends up empty-handed, again.
In football there is a very old phrase, which is attributed to a Brazilian coach, Elba de Padua Lima, ‘Tim’, who, among other things, took Peru to the 1982 World Cup in Spain: “Football is a short blanket. If you cover your feet, you uncover your head, and if you cover your head, you uncover your feet…”.
Millionaires, last year, had the attack well covered, but failed in defense: He tried three different goalkeepers (Christian Vargas, Juan Moreno and Esteban Ruiz) and none worked for him. And those failures, plus the fact of losing several penalties in decisive moments, cost him elimination.
The team moved quickly and, even before the finals were played, they hired a goalkeeper, Álvaro Montero: they took it from the champion, Deportes Tolima. But then he couldn’t hold his scorer, Fernando Uribe, who went to Junior with a better offer.
very low
When the 2022 payroll was drawn up, a gunner was missing. Gustavo Serpa, The largest shareholder of Millonarios, responded ironically when asked at the beginning of this year about the lack of reinforcements in that area: “They forgot that we hired Álvaro Montero, almost nothing.”
“We have a policy of financial responsibility and we are not going to bankrupt the team by bringing in an expensive player.… The numbers in Colombia are disproportionate to our financial options… We are not going to stop taking players out of our youth academy just to bring in players for no reason”, added Serpa.
In the end, the team had to reach into their pockets (obviously, with less money than what they paid for Fernando Uribe) and they hired Diego Herazo as his replacement, who had just made acceptable campaigns with Bucaramanga, Cúcuta, Medellín and, above all, La Equidad, but without being a great gunner.
Herazo did what he could: he scored six goals, two of them from penalties. And he was left out of the two home games in which the elimination was sealed, against Junior and Nacional. The fault was not his.
Millionaires had already shown throughout the semester that they did not have the same forcefulness as last season.
The goal conversion percentage in all of this 2022 is low: he made 122 shots on goal and scored 27 goals, for an effectiveness of 22.1 percent: it only surpasses Once Caldas (20.5), Cali (20.3) and Unión (14.5).
The problem was aggravated in the home runs. The percentage dropped to 16.7: 5 goals after 24 shots on goal, only above Medellín and Envigado (see graph). Little for a team that defends its idea in possession of the ball: 61 percent on average, in five games.
Millionaires needs goals and yesterday they moved quickly: they hired the second top scorer in the current League, Luis Carlos Ruiz, who is already 35 years old and has just scored 11 goals with Cortuluá. It will be enough? For now, the pain of removal remains fresh.
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