Bravos Hosts Club America Tonight, Playoff Spot On The Line
Bravos de FC Juarez will host Club America tonight at Benito Juarez Olympic Stadium. The most hated team in Mexican soccer, America will make another appearance here in the Borderland in the final week of the regular season. It is a match that will determine the Bravos playoff fate.
Currently the Bravos find themselves occupying the final spot in the playoffs sitting in 12th place in the standings table with 18th points. A win will clinch them a spot in the playoffs. However, that win will have to come against a Club America that is in second place in the standings and rest assured they want to stay there.
The team from Coapa (the neighborhood in Mexico City were their team installations are located) can’t move into first place in the standings in this final week of the regular season with a win, but they can move down in the table with a tie or a loss directly affecting their playoff seed. This alone will give America plenty of motivation to try and obtain a positive result against the team from the Borderland.
If the best the Bravos can do is a draw to end the regular season, they will depend on the result of the Puebla-Atletico San Luis and the Santo-Mazatlan match to see if they are in the playoffs or not.
A FC Juarez loss and they will need for both Puebla and Mazatlan to lose. The Puebla-San Luis match will begin and end before the Bravos kick off. Puebla is one position behind FC Juarez in the standings, in 13th place with 17 points.
Needless to say, knowing what the final result is in that match will definitely help the Bravos.
Mazatlan is in 14th place with 16 points.
FC Juarez has always played America tough since the team was established, at that time in Copa MX play. Since the team’s move to Mexico’s first division, the Bravos have had a 1-1 draw against America last fall at home and defeated them in Azteca Stadium this past February by the score of 3-1.
Tonight’s match will be televised on nationally on TUDN. No doubt that this will be the most bias broadcast that FC Juarez fans will have to stomach all season long as TUDN is owned by Televisa and Televisa also owns Club America. Soccer fans of other teams have come to terms that the broadcast booth for TUDN/Televisa always tends to turn in America’s personal cheering section. The match is scheduled to kickoff at 8:30pm MST.