The Uruguayan team overcame a poor game on Thursday to beat the Gambia 1-0 to advance to the quarter-finals of the U-20 World Cup in Argentina, where the hitherto unbeatable United States awaits.
‘La Celeste’ was far from his best level, but an Anderson Duarte shot from the edge of the penalty area in the 65th minute created an unbalanced game in which both sides finished with one player short, following the exclusions of Mbye and Luciano Rodríguez.
At the Estadio Único Madre de Ciudades in Santiago del Estero, Franco González was once again the best of the Charrúas, who still haven’t regained the brilliance that took them to second place in South America this year.
They will have to improve a lot if they want to have options against the US on Sunday, who have won everything they’ve played in this World Cup without conceding a single goal.
The Gambia says goodbye after shining in the group stage. Their star striker Adama Bojang did not appear.
It was not a good first part of Uruguay. In fact it was terrible. Thick as against Tunisia, Marcelo Broli’s team had the aggravating circumstance that it played in superiority for almost the entire first half and did not use it.
After the first ten minutes of scoring, the Charrúas took control of the game and a mistimed tackle by Mbye on Juan de los Santos left them down by one man.
The French referee did not realize the intensity of the violation, but the VAR did. The Gambia players spread their arms without understanding anything. Mbye left devastated for the changing room tunnel. La Celeste was facing a draw, but nothing could be further from the truth.
The pace was very slow. Missed rock and roll, hunger. The Gambia, always well located, reduced spaces and choked the creativity of the South Americans.
The only one who seemed to be in a hurry was Franco González. The 10 explicitly asked for the ball between the lines. Desperate, he even tried his luck from midfield when he realized the rival goalkeeper was ahead.
Anderson, a novelty in the eleven replacing the injured Matías Abaldo, appeared to fail one-on-one for the first time and Luciano Rodríguez put a lot of effort and little order into it.
As a result, he was expelled from school in another VAR intervention after elbowing Sainey Sanyang, who had previously made a worthy rugby block on him.
Everything balanced in the second half, with Uruguay pardoning more than usual. Anderson botched another excellent individual play from Ponte and De los Santos missed the empty goal after a superb performance from Franco González.
The match, on the other hand, continued just as abruptly. But then Duarte appeared with a whiplash from the front that slipped into Dampha’s goal. It was more than a goal, it was a relief.
The Gambia felt the blow. It was no longer that loose team from the group stage. Uruguay, true to this afternoon’s playbook, continued to accumulate missed opportunities. The most obvious, one from Nicolás Siri, just for the goalkeeper, when he had a teammate a few yards away.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to regret it. Gambia stepped on the accelerator in the last minutes, but Uruguay fell strongly behind and will be among the eight best in the world.
Source: El heraldo
I’m George Gonzalez, a professional journalist and author at The Nation View. With more than 5 years of experience in the field, I specialize in covering sports news for various print media outlets. My passion for writing has enabled me to craft stories that capture the attention of readers all over the world.
