Photo: Miguel Sierra / EFE
In a crazy match, Atlas ended up getting the pass to the Liga MX final due to a penalty in the discount he left the miracle of Tigres was unfinished. Those led by El “Piojo” Herrera ended up winning the match 4-2 at home, but were left out by the final aggregate 5-4. Later, Liga MX confirmed that the felines used an improper lineup due to an excess of foreigners on the pitch (9), which meant a defeat at the table.
The auriazules, defeated 3-0 in the first leg in Guadalajara, never gave up and with the help of their French star André-Pierre Gignac who propelled his team with a hat-trick, they kept looking for what impossible. The French arrived at 29 goals and surpassed the 10 scored by Alberto García Aspe, to become the third player with the most goals in Liguillas, a record that ended with a taste of nothing.
Gignac had scored the 54 and 59 minutes to turn the scoreboard after Julián Quiñones’ goal for the red and blacks in the first half and outline a hair-raising rest of the match.
It was Gignac’s third goal, second by penalty, which made things really interesting with the score 3-1. Tigres needed only one more and there was plenty of time left to get it.
At the minute 59, the Venezuelan Yeferson Soteldo combined with Quiñones and with an angled shot he almost scored the goal that would equalize the series, however the ball brushed the post of the goal of the foxes.
The resistance of the Atlas seemed to break in the final stretch of the game. And that’s how at the minute 59 Igor Lichnovsky scored the goal of the apparent feat that was giving the miracle to those of Piojo Herrera.
The frustrated miracle of Tigres1200
At the end of the minute 90, the referee extended the match for another eight minutes in which was now Atlas who launched the attack to kill or be killed. The match was a sovereign madness in which after going to the VAR a maximum penalty was sentenced to 96 for a foul on Aldo Rock.
Aldo himself is in charge of executing the maximum penalty and scoring the goal that would frustrate the aspirations of Tigres and put Atlas in the final.
Frustration gradually took hold of the Tigres players and Nahuel Guzmán kicked a second ball into the field game, and thus he would be expelled leaving his team with 10.
When the fans were trying to assimilate what happened in the big game, Liga MX reported that it was turning over the possible improper alignment of Tigres to the Disciplinary Commission . Either way, on the field or at the table, Tigres is out and Atlas will go for the two-time championship against Pachuca or America, who will face each other this Sunday in the other semifinal.
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