Well who saw this coming? With it all laid out for Boca Juniors to win the Apertura championship, they go out and lay an egg. Going ahead midway through the first half didn't seem to steady their nerves as Lanus answered back to put Boca's title hopes in jeopardy. Ricardo La Volpe was as stunned as his players yesterday after learning that Estudiantes de La Plata took care of their end of things.Diego Simeone's side battled a game Arsenal de Sarandi to score twice in the last four minutes of the game to set up Wednesday's winner-take-all. Going by recent results, you’d have to put your money on Estudiantes to come out on top. They have won eleven out of their last twelve matches, the only non-win a draw last week at Argentinos Juniors.
68% of Argentine daily Ole's online readers think Estudiantes will win, while it's 66% at newspaper La Nacion. No matter the situation, in this last title race stretch, Estudiantes have found a way to score.
The same can’t be said for a Boca side that has been limping to the finish line hoping that their pursuers would trip up and give away the title. Losing their last two matches against mid-table competition has left the Buenos Aires side completely demoralized. If they stand any chance of facing up to Estudiantes and winning on Wednesday, they’re going to have to dig pretty deep.
The FA decided against pushing the season's last match to Thursday and has settled on Wednesday at the Jose Amalfitani stadium in Buenos Aires. Both clubs were against playing on Thursday, preferring the original plan of playing on Wednesday. There were two extenuating circumstances concerning the game's switch from el Cilindro to Velez Sarsfield's home ground. One, was that Racing Club's stadium already had an event planned for that Wednesday, and second, the FA would be able to assign more police in the city of Buenos Aires than in the suburb of Avellaneda.
In the history of Argentine soccer, a tiebreaker has been played three times:
- 1932 - River Plate and Independiente finish tied with 50 points apiece. In San Lorenzo, River took home the title after a 3-0 win.
- 1951 - Racing Club and Banfield raced to the wire and ended up level on 44 points. They met on December 1st in San Lorenzo and drew 0-0. Four days later, they faced off in San Lorenzo once again and Racing were able to squeeze one in to win 1-0 and take home the title.
- 1968 - Velez , Racing and River all finished tied on 22 points. They played a round-robin mini-tournament where Velez drew 1-1 with River and beat Racing 4-2 to win the championship on goal difference over River.
Boca's loss sets up Apertura final against Estudiantes [International Herald Tribune]
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