Rock you like a Huracán

I already had the pleasure to write a little about the Argentinian cup winners once, now there’s going to be some more of that. The group Huracán was drawn into, number three, has not seen a single game this season yet, so it all started here. Venezuela’s championship runner-up Mineros seemed all but unbeatable.

The game started way differently than the Scorpions famously sang. Mineros had lots of the ball in their opponent’s half, until the hosts finally woke up just after the tenth minute, hitting the crossbar with a spectacular volley effort. From now on, Huracán played like the favorite and had one chance after the other. By this point there was no way past looking up the name of the Venezuelan goalkeeper. Rafael Romo pulled off some fine saves and kept his team in it.

While I was still being fascinated by that, Mineros won a free kick on the edge of the area and Zamir Valoyes put the game on its head by slotting it low into the right corner. Huracán was not shocked though and kept having good chances and just as I thought of awesome headlines a la “Romo was not built in a game”, I realized that every empire must fall eventually. He made a mess of an easy ball and Lucas Villarruel took advantage, 1-1. With that, and the reserve keeper from Huracán for the injured Marco Díaz, we went into halftime.

The second half began like the first one ended, the Argentinians kept applying pressure on their guests and had shot after shot at Romo’s goal. Return of the empire? Rather a kingdom for a precise shot. On the other side, Mineros did not do it better in the 76th minute. They managed to hit both crossbar and post in only 5 seconds. Just as both teams seemed to want to showcase every way not to score, Valoyes was being brought down in the area and added a second goal for the guests by scoring the following penalty himself. It was not deserved, and it also did not hold for very long. Huracán captain Eduardo Dominguez added a goal via penalty himself, 2-2 and that was that.

The bottom line is that it was an entertaining game to watch, Huracán need to improve their finishing, while Mineros is not as much of an outsider as they were projected to be. Here are the video highlights of the game for you.