Chivas defeat Juarez convincingly 2-0

On Saturday night in a sold out Estadio Akron in the state of Jalisco las Chivas de Guadalajara took on los Bravos from Juarez for both of their first Liga MX matches of the 2020 Clausura.

Chivas came into the game with more energy than anyone could imagine. From the wild offseason from all the signings of nearly 50 Million being spent, to returning players, and a packed out house showed that fans were more excited than the players.

Juarez came in with a pretty good off season of their own, even signing a former FMF executive to their front office with Memo Cantu among other signings. They came into the game the underdogs, but tried to make the game a competition. This is a shorter recap but the game preview can be found here.

The game started off with high energy  from Chivas and bad defending from Juarez. When someone sees the box score of 2-0 they don’t expect much to have happened, but this offense led by Alexis Vega, Isaac “Conejo” Brizuela, and Eduardo ” Chofis” Lopez, and J.J Macias looked amazing. Chivas opened scoring in the 32nd minute when Eduardo “Chofis” Lopez played in a cross to J.J Macias, but the ball was deflected by a Juarez defender and the ball fell to the feet of Alexis Vega who squared up his shot and buried it near the right post. Chivas were up 1-0, and ran with that momentum. A few minutes later Eduardo “Chofis” Lopez kept attacking that weak left side of the Juarez defense sending in a cross to J.J Macias again, but this time it wasn’t deflected. The ball fell to the foot of J.J Macias where he didn’t have to do much but stutter step to the left and that gave him enough space to finish at the right post similar to Vega’s goal a few minutes earlier. That finish by J.J Macias was first class as he looked calm and collected.

Truth be told it’s a miracle they didn’t score 5 goals, but due to competition for starting spots a lot of selfishness occurred last night. One example was in the 52nd minute when “Conejo” Brizuela made a beautiful run splitting open the defense and instead of passing it to a striding J.J Macias, or  Eduardo “Chofis” Lopez who were all making runs and alone on the right side of the box. Isaac “Conejo” Brizuela tried taking on 3 defenders and the goalkeeper which resulted in a Juarez defender poking it right away from him. To be honest there are even more examples, but Chivas need to clean it up once a starting 11 gets cemented for the season, because these plays would have hurt them against a better team in Liga MX.

Very talented new transfer Uriel Antuna made his debut and was one of the more unselfish players, so be on the lookout for the talented player bought from Manchester City this past offseason. We see coach Luis Fernando Tena is slowly integrating players as only a couple new faces from the many they acquired were seen during this game. We will see what coach Tena’s rotations may look like or if he will play a through and through 11 for the whole season. Copa games will be way more interesting than years past due to all of these new players maybe starting the games to prove themselves.

Chivas win their home opener even if it is a lowly Juarez F.C it’s still worth celebrating as wins were hard to come by in the past year. Juarez look to bounce back next week as they take on Pumas U.N.A.M Thursday in a short week for them.Chivas get a week off and resume play against Pachuca on Saturday where fingers crossed we will see the debut of electric forward Victor Guzman who missed this game due to personal reasons.