Translated material
Sunny football
America's Cup pleases with results
The main football tournament of the Western Hemisphere, the Copa America, continues in Venezuela, the motto of which can be formulated as follows: “More goals, beautiful and different.”South American football has always been famous for its pursuit of beauty and was alien to prudence and pragmatism. The 42nd America's Cup was no exception, where in addition to ten national teams from South America, Mexico and the USA also compete. Don’t feed Latin Americans bread, but let them play tricks, dribble past their opponents several times, and, of course, score a goal. Moreover, the more beautiful, the better. There is something in this from street football, where the result fades into the background, and the main thing is passion, the thirst for fight, the beauty and grace of scoring combinations. In the match Brazil - Chile, CSKA Moscow player Vagner Love repeatedly acted as a carrier of shells for Real Madrid star Robinho, who scored and scored, scoring a hat-trick. But the “army man” did not even think of being offended by his partner for not sharing the balls with him. “I don’t mind retraining as a dispatcher if my teammates score goals from my passes and Brazil wins,” admitted Wagner.
Three goals scored in the mentioned match is quite an ordinary phenomenon for the current draw. Often four or five goals were scored in matches. And in the game Argentina - Colombia (4:2) there were six of them. In total, since the beginning of the championship, 47 goals have been played in 14 meetings, as indicated by the “holometer” located in the most prominent place on the official Cup website. After some simple calculations, we get 3.36 goals per game, which compared to the indicators of, say, the Russian Premier League (2.14) looks simply fantastic.
Goal scorers also stand out in particular at the tournament. “Goleadors” are especially honored here, and every player tries to rise higher in this list of the chosen ones. In addition to Robinho, several other heroes managed to score three goals in two matches - Argentinean Hernan Crespo and Paraguayans Roque Santa Cruz and Salvador Cabanas. During all this scoring race, the tournament position is somehow forgotten. Yes, of course, points are important, but in the end, a great team will somehow still end up in the top eight participating in the playoffs. And who you end up with in the quarterfinal pairing is not that important. The main thing, her highness is the Game!
Meanwhile, at the America's Cup, the time for decisive matches is getting closer and closer. The first to complete the preliminary round were the participants of group “A”, the most even quartet in the current draw. The teams of Bolivia and Peru met at the Metropolitano Stadium in Merida. Score at 25 min. Bolivian Jaime Moreno opened the game, but soon the Peruvian captain Claudio Pizarro, who had recently become a Chelsea recruit, scored an accurate header - 1:1. Just before the break, Hasmani Campos put the Bolivians ahead again. At the 77th minute. Joel Herrera was sent off the field for two yellow cards. But even playing in the minority, the Peruvian team again equalized the score - 2:2. The double was scored by Pizarro.
In another match of the day, the home team also tied (0:0) with the Uruguayans. As a result, three teams qualified for the playoffs from this group: Venezuela (five points), Peru and Uruguay (four points each). The Bolivians should be sad to the point of tears (two points), who lost only to the Uruguayans (0:1), almost put the finishing touches on Peru (2:2), and even played on equal terms with Venezuela in the opening match (2:2).
Three more tickets to the decisive round were previously won by Mexico (six points in Group B), Paraguay and Argentina (six points each in Group C). A number of teams led by Brazil are vying for the two remaining vacancies.
America's Cup. Group stage. Group "A". Peru - Bolivia - 2:2, Venezuela - Uruguay - 0:0. Result: Venezuela - 5 points (goal difference 4:2), Peru - 4 (5:4), Uruguay - 4 (1:3), Bolivia - 2 (4:5).