By Jorge Hernandez
01 Dec 2024, 21:20 PM EST
The Colombian Juan Carlos Osoriotechnical director of the Xolos from Tijuanaoffered apologies to his team’s fans, arguing a “wrong strategy” with which They lost a 3-0 lead and that cost them elimination from the tournament in the quarterfinals of the Liga MX.
“I take responsibility for the entire strategy that we used and that was not enough for us. We lost against a great rival, the best team in the tournament. My apologies to the fans because we did not compete at 100 percent, we did not manage to score a goal and we leave sad with our people,” the strategist declared at a press conference after the game.
In the first leg, disputed Last Wednesday, the border team won 3-0, but the aggregate score of 3-3 qualified Blue Cross for its best position in the regular phase.
This Saturday, Tijuana opted for the counterattack in the first half and generated a couple of chances that they could not define. Cruz Azul dominated the match and scored thanks to the Uruguayan Ignacio Rivero, the Greek Giorgos Giakoumakis and Ángel Sepúlveda.
Osorio, who was Mexico’s coach at the 2018 World Cup in Russia, acknowledged that from the first game he had doubts about whether the three-goal advantage would be enough to eliminate the tournament leader.
“In the first game we were much superior, we looked for the fourth goal, but we couldn’t find it. That was the unknown for today: whether three goals would be enough or not. In the end, they weren’t,” he admitted.
The strategist explained that his game plan was broken the moment Cruz Azul scored before the end of the first half.
“The idea was to reach halftime with the score 0-0, but they made it happen beforehand and that changed everything for us. Then we wanted to go for one more goal, we couldn’t, and they tied the series. That’s football; They were superior, and nothing more,” he concluded.
Juan Carlos Osorio arrived in Tijuana at the beginning of Apertura 2024 and qualified his team to the final phase via playoffs, in which they eliminated Atlas.
*With information from EFE.
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