Rise Like A Phoenix From The Ashes.

[Rangersitis 0]

San Lorenzo finally put their Copa Libertadores misery behind them

 

 

For years they’ve been known as Club Atlético Sin Libertadores de América – but that old joke can now be put to rest

 

 

 

Néstor Ortigoza took a long run, so long that you feared a player of his girth might not actually make it to the ball. He stuttered twice on his way into the box, waited for Ignacio Don to commit himself and then slipped the penalty low into the right-hand side of the goal. And with that, Club Atlético Sin Libertadores de América, one of the oldest jokes in Argentinian football, had ceased to be. Ramón Coronel’s handball had proved decisive.

 

What the Pope could not do for the national team, he managed for his club side. Francis I has never made any secret of his support for San Lorenzo, a team that was founded by a priest after he saw a boy knocked down in the street by a tram as he played in the street. In the first championship after his investiture his team won the league and at the first opportunity they have won the Libertadores. The CASLA motif on their badge now stands merely for Club Atlético San Lorenzo de Almagro.

 

And to think that just two years ago, San Lorenzo survived a relegation play-off and were 170m pesos (around £12.3m) in debt. Their rise under the president Matias Lammens has been extraordinary. Edgardo Bauza has finished the job as coach, adding a second Libertadores to the one he won with Liga de Quito in 2008, but he paid tribute to the work done by his predecessor, Juan Antonio Pizzi, who left after winning the league to take charge of Valencia.

 

“We had to win it,” Bauza said. “I’m happy. The team was very nervous in the first half. In the past few days we haven’t been able to relax, so everything was imprecise. You could see the team was nervous, and they caught that from the public. Luckily we won. We deserved it. We’re the best in America. Two years ago the club suffered but now we can enjoy it. I congratulate all the leaders of the club who have achieved this, and I remember Juan Antonio, who won the title.”

 

 

It was a huge night for everybody connected with San Lorenzo, but perhaps for nobody so much as Leandro Romagnoli. He is an old-fashioned kind of player, the sort of No10 who awakes in Argentinians a nostalgia for the golden age; for him this was a glorious consecration. He had been a San Lorenzo fan as a boy, had promised his mother he would make history for the club, made his debut for them aged 17. He won the Clausura with them in 2001, the same year he helped Argentina to the Under-20 World Cup, but left in 2004 to join Veracruz and then Sporting.

 

But he went back home in 2009 and now, at 33, he has fulfilled his vow. His substitution with a couple of minutes to go may not have been intended as sentiment by Bauza, but it allowed him an appropriate ovation. After 15 league titles, San Lorenzo have at last become the ninth Argentinian winners of the Copa Libertadores; they are no longer defined by an absence. “I think of the joy of the fans,” he said. “Of what it means to the club to win the Cup. They’d never played in a final but we were able to give that to them. Many of the fans are 80 or 90 years old: they waited a lifetime for this.”

 

Wednesday’s final wasn’t, in truth, much of a game, but few of the 44,000 packed into a raucous Nuevo Gasómetro cared about that. San Lorenzo weren’t as impressive as they had been the previous week, when they’d had much the better of the first leg in Asunción, only for Nacional to pinch a last-minute equaliser.

 

Perhaps they missed Ignacio Piatti, ruled out, essentially, by the difficulties of the Libertadores’ scheduling. He had signed for Montreal and wasn’t allowed to stay on an additional week. Or perhaps it was simply nerves. After all, these chances don’t come very often, and the familiar process of dismantling a successful Argentinian team is already well under way. Even before Piatti had been sold, Ángel Corea had left to join Atlético Madrid, although his career has stalled after his medical showed up a heart defect.

 

Nacional, their progress to this stage a remarkable achievement in itself, were initially content to scrap and spoil, relying on the shakiness of the San Lorenzo backline to generate chances. One presented itself after just a minute, Derlis Orué striking the outside of a post with a snapshot after some chaotic defending. For San Lorenzo, the anxiety was a constant: every Nacional ball into the box seemed to pose a danger.

 

With a little over 10 minutes remaining, another long ball was not dealt with, dropping for Fredy Bareiro. He lined up the dropping ball and as he did so, Santiago Gentiletti flew in making a desperate lunge that was just enough to deflect the ball over the bar. It was typical both of San Lorenzo’s lack of composure at the back, and also of their commitment.

 

As fireworks flew up from the terraces and players scaled the fences to celebrate with the fans, the lack of class didn’t seem to matter. This wasn’t about the spectacle on the night: it was about clearing a debt to history.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/aug/14/san-lorenzo-copa-libertadores

 

 

Proof of what can be achieved with the right men at the helm.

[calscot 0]

Maybe it's just me, but after reading that, I've absolutely no idea what it's all about... I think it requires a hell of a lot of background knowledge to understand most of the article.