The Columbus Crew current champion of Major League Soccer (MLS) made use of its local status to defeat Monterrey 2-1 in the first leg of the Concachampions semifinal and leave the entire finalist ticket definition for next week on Mexican soil, but with the small detail that the Rayados will have to prevent the North American eleven from scoring goals by the tiebreaker criterion.
Unlike the quarterfinals, where it seemed that the Tigres de la UANL with the tie that they got out of this same square by 1-1, they would have the table set to place themselves in these instances, in the end the North American team played their cards intelligently, achieving a 1-1 draw to send the duel to penalties and there eliminate the team Mexican by a score of 4-3.
Now they will want to repeat history with Monterrey, but with greater advantage to be able to move their pieces in the BBVA stadium, in the payment of the visit, which will obviously be a challenge for the team led by the Argentine Fernando Ortiz, that after eliminating the powerful Inter Miami in the quarterfinals With all its stars such as the Argentine Lionel Messi, the Uruguayan Luis Suárez, as well as the Spaniards Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba, it was thought that they could have gotten a better result from the field of the current MLS monarchs.
In the end it was not possible and with goals from the Colombian Juan Hernández and the Canadian Russrell-Rowe, they managed to beat the Mexican team, which responded with the goal of the Argentine Maximiliano Meza in the second half in a great overflow by Jesús Gallardo that he only had to send to the networks
As expected, from the first whistle the hostilities were between couples. First, Monterrey warned with a great shot by Mexican-American Brandon Vázquez in the 5th minute that goalkeeper Patrick Schulte managed to stop, ruining the brilliant action by Luis Romo that left his teammate almost a bomb, but the Crew goalkeeper made the great action. .
But the Columbus Crew responded and in the 16th minute, Diego Rossi almost broke the goal, however, the Uruguayan did not cross the service of Juan Hernández in time, who would be the driving force of the victory with great plays such as the shot after this action that Monterrey’s Argentine goalkeeper Esteban Andrada served with a spectacular blow.
Fernando Ortiz’s pupils responded with another arrival from Brandon Vázquez, who shot at the base of the post, but goalkeeper Schulte again prevented his goal from falling. The response was lethal, since Juan Hernández scored the first goal in the 25th minute to put his team ahead 1-0.
Thus, the game progressed in apparent calm and it was not until the second half when Monterrey tied around the 55th minute through Meza, but that again caused Columbus Crew to go ahead and manage to take the lead again on the scoreboard. through Russrell-Rowe and thus sentence the game 2-1 to force Monterrey to have to row against the current in the second leg.
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