The fact that Millonarios does not score goals is already becoming a habit. 377 minutes passed for the blue fans to celebrate a goal again, and a rival also had to arrive, Unión Magdalena defender José Edilberto Gómez, to break that streak.
But for the blue strikers, the problem is not over: counting the friendly that the team played on Wednesday against Emelec in Guayaquil, there are already 503 minutes without a Millonarios striker scoring a goal. That drought will try to break it against another club that was doing well in the 2021 auction and is now also in trouble, Deportivo Cali, current champion, but also penultimate in the League (6:10 pm, with a signal from Win Sports +).
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Alberto Gamero is still looking for alternatives
Coach Alberto Gamero has tried all the available options: Diego Herazo (396 minutes on the pitch in the League), Édgar Guerra (151), Carlos Gómez (151), Yuber Quiñones (61), Jáder Valencia (48) and Ricardo Márquez ( Four. Five).
The curious thing is that the goal-scoring machine has been turned off in a team that, with the same coach and a good part of the current payroll, was, and by far, the highest scorer in the second half of last year: 45 goals, three more than Atlético Nacional and four more than Deportivo Cali, who kept the star.
In that semester, in 26 games, Millos only went blank four times. He already reached that figure in 2022, in just six games, five officials.
What changed from that scoring machine that was Millos last year to today? The data is terrifying: the Blues have the worst percentage of effectiveness in the entire League, with just 3.9 percent (see graph). Very little for a team that handles the ball for so long: it is the one that has made the most passes (2,547) and the one that fails the least in that sense (84 percent effectiveness).
Gamero considers that the team has done everything to score the goals that they are missing so much. “The concern is when we don’t generate. We arrived. Sometimes the decision-making of a player, when he is going to score the goal, is a personal decision, with calm and positioning. This is an offensive team, in five games we have had more than 60 arrivals, but we didn’t make it happen. The important thing is that they don’t lose their conviction and faith in what they do”, he explained after the victory against Unión Magdalena.
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Casualties have affected the performance of Millionaires
Millonarios lost 15 goals compared to 2021: 12 from Fernando Uribe and 3 from Émerson Rodríguez. Herazo, although he has tried to fit into the scheme, does not seem to be as collective as Uribe. And when he is not there, well, his absence is much more noticeable, because Ricardo Márquez is not only struggling with the goal, but with the ball.
But in addition, another player who was key in the formation, Daniel Giraldo, was not replaced with a player with similar characteristics: not only did he take the ball away, but he knew how to associate himself and, in fact, provided three assists, only surpassed by the three midfielders creatives that Millos had last semester, Mackalister Silva (7), Daniel Ruiz (6) and Harrison Mojica (4), another who left. And another key player in the attack, full-back Andrés Felipe Román (he had three goals and two assists in 2021-II), barely returned last game.
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Millonarios urgently needs to find a solution to the goal problem and everything seems to indicate that it will have to do it with the remaining squad, because it is not planned, initially, for anyone else to arrive. The pass book closes on March 4 and the debut in the Libertadores is pressing.
Jose Orlando Ascencio
Sports Sub-Editor
@josasc
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