Sunday, April 19, 2009

U17 - Winning Start For Little Argentina

Little Argentina kick started their Sudamericano Under-17 campaign off to winning start, after taking maximum points in a bad tempered encounter with Venezuela. A goal in each half was enough to claim victory for Jose Luis Brown’s side in a game which ended with both teams reduced to ten men.

The Argentine performance may not have their opponents quaking, but a potential banana skin has been avoided and the 2-0 win puts them joint top of Group B.

With the game still in its infancy, Alexis QUINTULEN decided to test the Venezuelan keeper with a fizzed free-kick from outside the box. Jesus ESCALONA duly found the shot too hot to handle and handed Argentina a corner kick.

QUINTULEN, again, put in a testing delivery and as skipper Esteban ESPINDOLA rose to meet it, he was bundled over and the referee pointed to the spot. ESPINDOLA dusted himself down and elected to take the penalty himself, planting it way beyond the reach of ESCALONA.

Argentina’s corners continued to be a problem for Venezuela all night, as they persisted in sending up three centre backs each time.

In the second half, Venezuela were reduced to 10 men after defender Rafaelle CENTOFANTI became the first player to be sent off in this competition. His dismissal came for the double offence of upending Daniel VILLALVA and then booting the ball against him as he lay on the deck.

It did not take Argentina long to capitalize on the numerical advantage and a Sebastian GONZALEZ free-kick was converted by Sergio ARAUJO. ARAUJO’s performance was well worth a goal, as he hassled and harried the Venezuelan defense from start to finish.


Next up for Argentina is the hosts Chile.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

John, this article is off of Goal.com, and all the first names of our players are wrong.
It's Esteban Espindola, Daniel Villalva, Benjamin Rosales, Sergio Araujo, Alexis Quintulen.
Also, i watched this match and we played a bit within ourselves, and upped the pace in the second half.
Villalva and Araujo are two very good prospects, very good on the ball, with great technical ability.
Wat was good to see was that as soon as they lost the ball all the players would run back and harry the opposition to get the ball back. The work rate of the team was good.
Wat that article doesn't say is that Venezuela should have been playing with 8 players. There were 2 really bad incidents, one on araujo where he got smacked in the face and the other where an argentinian player was on the ground and a venezuelan player stamped deliberately on his arm.
Plus at times it looked like the venezuelans had come to take part in a wrestling match.
Anyway we got the 3 points and that's the important thing.


day1star

John said...

Thanks Day1Star, yeah the only good article that was available was from Goal.com. Thanks for clarifying on the error. I will amend them.

I hope to see better luck from the Under-17 team (since we won't have our Under-20 in Egypt). Hopefully 2009 could be the year.

Anonymous said...

well they've made a good start. Hopefully they will get better game by game.


day1star

Anonymous said...

Here's the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX5r3LHAQ3Y