There’s no question that Club America are massive favorites heading into their series against Toluca in the semifinals of Liga MX. Toluca is coming off two highly emotional games against Santos which they prevailed in. The team though showed some deficiencies particularly defensively throughout the series. They were able to tighten up in the second leg game, and come out with what was perhaps a surprising win in the second leg on the road.
For their part Club America just went out and dominated Puebla. The first game ended 6-1 in favor of Club America, and the second game finished with an almost identical score with 5-1 being the tally at the final whistle. Thanks to these results, Club America is without a doubt the massive favorite to win the series and make the finals. Could they squash Toluca in the same way that they did with Puebla?
Toluca’s Defense Has Not Been Great
We’ve been a bit reluctant to come out and say that Toluca is back to their early season form. They were one of those teams that got out of the blocks really fast, but struggled from the halfway point in the season onward. We even had Nacho Ambriz as one of those coaches who could be on the outside looking in at season’s end. By taking his team to the semi finals it could be argued that he’s earned himself at least another tournament as Toluca head coach. They’ve won 4 games straight coming into the series against Club America, that’s no small feat. Still, the defense isn’t looking all that hot. They were certainly better yesterday than they had been in the first leg against Santos, and certainly against Juarez.
The fact that they just don’t seem to be solid defensively is something that could lead to an early downfall. Especially if they try and come out punching against this Club America team. It’s one thing to want to make sure that Club America is also worried about you potentially doing damage in front of goal. It’s a different issue to just not get back defensively like Puebla did in that first match. In any case, there’s an argument to be made that the Toluca defense is shaky enough to where Club America could drop 4 goals, and it wouldn’t be a major surprise.
There’s More Firepower On The Toluca Side
Although we haven’t loved Toluca defensively we do have to say that there’s certainly more fire power offensively on their squad than on the Puebla team that Club America embarrassed. Camilo Zanvezzo has been hot as of late, and even Carlos Gonzalez who had only scored one goal in the regular season found the back of the net in the team’s previous series. In this aspect it’s potentially Club America who can’t be overconfident. Another error like the one that Nestor Araujo had in the second leg against Puebla, and the series can get interesting.
Our Prediction For The Series
Seeing what both teams did in their previous matchups we have to think that this is going to be a high scoring series. We wouldn’t be surprised if we saw something like 4 or 5 goals per game in this series. If your team’s out of the Liga MX playoffs, and you want to watch a game just to have fun this is the series that you’re going to want to watch. As far as who’s going to win we’d have to side with Club America. It wouldn’t be odd for them to win the series with a 5-3 overall score or something similar to that.
