Bravos Lose to Tigres in Closing Minutes, Set to Face Pachuca

FC Juarez lost again.

The Bravos were minutes away from putting punctuation on a more than formidable performance on Wednesday night against Tigres in the form of a 0-0 draw. Then the current nightmare that is the reality of the Bravos showed its face in the 87th minute, a lapse of concentration that left Tigres forward Andre-Pierre Gignac completely unmarked allowed for him to score the game-winner in a blink of an eye.

With the 1-0 defeat, the Bravos extended their winless streak to 11 matches. They have only won one match in their last 17 matches. That victory came in October of last year.

With all these kinds of streaks going against FC Juarez, talking about how they showed improvement on Wednesday night against Tigres is of little comfort to the fans of the team from the Borderland.

Still, it has to be said.

The Bravos showed improved organization and discipline on the field of play despite coming up short and failing to obtain at least a lone point for a draw in San Nicolas de los Garza on Wednesday night.

The improvement under the tutelage of new head coach/technical director Maurico Barbieri was notable, and another degree of improvement is expected to come this weekend when the Bravos continue the current road trip that they are on, facing Pachuca on Saturday evening.

After Wednesday’s loss to Tigres Barbieri said, “I feel we were up to par for tonight’s match. Last match (a 3-0 loss to Monterrey) we put together only 45 minutes of good soccer. I told the players we needed to do much better than that and we did that today. The team is growing, improving and trending in the right direction. This is what I’m taking from this match against Tigres. I feel that next match we will improve even more in order to obtain the points that we’re after.”

That next match will be on Saturday evening against a Pachuca team that has been one of the pleasant surprises thus far this season. The team from the state of Hidalgo known as the “Tuzos” is currently in third place in the general standing table with 19 points as a result of six wins, one draw and two losses.

Saturday evening’s match is scheduled to kick off at 6 p.m. MST. The match will be televised on VIX (Televisa and Univision’s streaming platform).