It was bad, it was ugly, it was horrid…and that might be putting it nicely. On Friday night, FC Juarez lost to Mazatlan FC by the score of 3-2 in the west coast state of Sinaloa. The Bravos sixth defeat of this 2020 Apertura season was against a Mazatlan team who has been bad, ugly and horrid all season long and didn’t depart much from that type of performance last night which should say volumes as to how bad the Bravos played.

The team from the Borderland was down by two goals in the first nine minutes of the match and then went down by three in the in the 34th minute of the match. All of this with happened with no real response by FC Juarez, they were imprecise on passing, lost possession easily and could not create any real threats on goal.

A ray of hope came in the 40th minute for the team from the Borderland when Brian Rubio found himself with the ball less than 5 yards from goal and was able to kick it in the back of the net to get the Bravos on the board. This wasn’t so much due to the proactive offensive play of FC Juarez as much as a defensive mistake by the home team who could not clear the ball from the danger zone.

FC Juarez.
FC Juarez.
loading...

The lackluster performances for both teams would continue into the second half until the 80th minute when Eryc Castillo would center a ball on a rebound. That ball would find Dario Lezcano who would score off of a header for the 3-2 score.
With this defeat the Bravos remain with 14 points this season and have dropped out of the playoff zone to 13th place in the standings table with still a majority of the matches left to be played in week 14 of the season.

After the match Bravos head coach Gabriel Caballero was sincere about his team’s performance. "The truth is we came out asleep at the start of this match, we fell behind by two goals in the first 9 minutes of the match and had to play catch up," Caballero commented. "I don’t think that we had a good first 30 minutes of the match, but then we adjusted and started to improve. Still, its difficult to come back from a 3-0 deficit, regardless we had chances to do so but we fell short."

As for the effort put forth by the Bravos during last night’s 90 minute of play, Caballero remained adamant about the team’s effort, dedication and will. Caballero said, "When a team is losing 3-0 and is on the brink of coming up with the 3-3 draw that means they make a great effort and fight to the last minute and that can’t be questioned."

Things will not get any easier on the schedule for the Bravos. Next week they will travel once to Monterrey to face Tigres who is in 5th place. The match is scheduled for Saturday, October 24th and kickoff will be at 6pm MST. The match will be Televised on TUDN.

More From 600 ESPN El Paso