Boca Feel Pain in the Rosario Rain

By: Brett | November 2nd, 2009

Rosario Central 2-1 Boca

insua

It’s a tried and true footballing cliche – you’ve got to take your chances. You’ve got to put the ball in the back of the net more times than your opponent. If you can’t do that, then you’re probably not going to win. If ever there was a clear example of this depressing footballing truth, it was Boca’s match against Rosario Central on Sunday evening.

The facts of the match are these. We had more shots. We had more shots on target. We had an obvious penalty go uncalled by the referee. We had a fair goal disallowed when the linesman incorrectly flagged Gaitan for offside. We were foiled once by the cross bar and once again by a defenders boot on the goal-line. We played a superior brand of football. We were the better team.

But the two facts that really matter are these: We scored only once – even though it was a cracker from Krupoviesa (a good old Argentinian name, that one). They scored twice.

As Insua quipped post-match, “We had a good game in general because we developed several clear scoring plays, but we lacked in definition.” Precisely. We were awesome.

Unfortunately, awesome counts for little in the final analysis because, like I said, in this game, you’ve got to take your chances. This especially hold true when you’re playing in weather consisting of intermittent torrential downpours, such was the case in this one.

And this is doubly true when you have a keeper who is prone to slipping over at crucial moments and not guarding his near post at others.

Now, I’m not going to berate the man, because I think he’s been very good of late and, to his credit, he has already accepted responsibility in the press. The first goal I’m just going to call ‘very unfortunate’, whereas blame for the second goal should be shared evenly amongst the defense as a whole, such was their collective averageness.

Young Monzon in particular, I feel needs to pull his finger out. He may have nearly equalised at the death, but he was far too weak in letting Castillejos get past for him for the decisive goal.

Despite our lack of chance taking ability, I was heartened by what was, on the whole, an encouraging performance. I say encouraging because we proved that without Romi, we do not morph into a fat, toothless, docile, house cat of a team. We can still be the strong, imposing, self confident lion of a team we resemble when he’s out there. We are still a force. Just as well too, seeing as he’ll be out for the better part of the next seven weeks due to injury.

Here are the goals:

But, here’s a link to ESPNdeportes, which has a better overall highlight package:

The result sees us slip back slightly into 10th, 6 points from top, but more importantly now, 5 points behind Argentinos Juniors in fourth. After the match, Insua had this to say:

“We must keep fighting to win the next game. Boca does not lower the championship, but we took a step back. Entering the Cup remains the goal and this time we could not convert the chances we create,”

El Pocho pretty much hit the nail on the head with that one. We’ve dug quite a hole for ourselves, so all we can do now is fight, keep picking up points and hope for a little luck. It’s a shitty position to be in, but them’s the facts, kids.

Vamos Boca…

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