Test passed and satisfactorily. In football, as in life, the big fish eat the small and, generally, the best beats the worst. If the waters maintain their natural course, logic prevails. And that’s what happened in the Colombia 3, Costa Rica 0 with which the National Team qualified early for the quarterfinals of the Copa América by winning its second consecutive match.
According to the criteria of
Reciting the verse of the entire Colombian National Team, repeated from the coach to the water carrier, passing from the goalkeeper to the left winger, the first step was taken in that “step by step” walk to the final of the tournament. They are now in the quarterfinals.
Colombia, superior
Colombia won the match by simply being superior. Costa Rica disguised itself as an ultra-defensive cuckoo after its giant 0-0 draw against Brazil, but Colombia took off its mask and left it in its correct dimensions, put it in its correct proportions… It crushed it!
Jhon Córdoba celebrates Colombia’s third goal.
Photo:Christian Alvarez
At no point in the game, not even in the initial 20 minutes in which Costa Rica wanted to play Colombia one-on-one, was the game at risk or compromised. Colombia was the absolute master and lord of a game in which it created danger, goal options, scored three goals and, in truth, did not allow a single real, dangerous option to be generated against it.
Colombia played a clean game, without worries and with definition.
It was a great game for ‘Triciclito’ Córdoba, a powerhouse of goal-scoring power who replaced Santos Borré by technical decision. Once again it was a magnificent game by James Rodríguez, who even made an assist with his right foot!
Goals and victory for Colombia
Colombia selection
Photo:EFE
The match lasted, in fact, half an hour, until the penalty awarded to Córdoba. Hasty and clumsy, goalkeeper Sequeira took down the forward on the far edge of the area.
So, Lucho Diaz He released the guillotine with cold blood, without his leg shaking, and nailed the 1-0 from the 12 steps.
That was the end of the game. Costa Rica never, ever, tickled a Colombia that controlled the game as it wished. Before the 1-0 and until the final 3-0, the game was comfortable for Colombia, which did not allow any goal-scoring opportunities to be created.
The 2-0 came with a header from Davinson Sanchez from a corner in the 59th minute: it was the confirmation of an evident superiority.
The final goal, in addition to making the score more realistic for what happened in the match, was a reward for Jhon, the ‘Little Tricycle’ Córdobawho was a brave, handsome, strong, back-heavy, attacking and disruptive forward, being a real part of the game circuit.
John Cordoba.
Photo:Getty Images via AFP
Following a pass from James with his crooked leg, he broke down the right and without caring about the slightest shooting angle; Not caring that free teammates were arriving in the center for the clean shot, he fired a cross shot that broke the 3-0 scoreline for the player on the field and for the team that owned the field and the game.
It was more the previous scare that Costa Rica generated with its tie against Brazil and its defense of stone and wire: Colombia had the keys in its pocket to open that lock, and it did so easily.
I sweat the lid more than the pot, my mom would say. Colombia was the big fish and it ate the little boy Costa Rica.
Meluk tells him
GABRIEL MELUK
SPORTS Editor
@MelukLeCuenta
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