Argentina Weekend Review: Estudiantes, Argentinos Pull Away

It may be cliche, but this with two rounds remaining in the Argentina Clausura, the men have truly been separated from the boys. The two favorites for the tournament, Estudiantes de La Plta and Argentinos Juniors, overcame early deficits on the road, while Independiente and Godoy Cruz fumbled brilliant chances to keep pace. 

Godoy Cruz, a humble club from Mendoza, have been the surprise outfit of the campaign and took the field in Rosario against Central Friday night with a glorious chance to leap frog the front-runners, if only temporarily, and put pressure on the favorites. 

Unfortunately for fans of El Tomba, they lost to the relegation threatened Central 1-0 as Diego Chitzoff struck at the death, forcing Godoy Cruz to watch eagerly and hope for the teams ahead of them to fall back as well.

Estudiantes, who had played a weakened side in Mexico during the Copa Libertadores midweek, had a completely rested first team and looked set to romp against already descended Chacarita; but El Funebrero had other ideas and jumped out to a 1-0 lead thanks to a long range strike from Omar Zarif that caught goalkeeper Agustin Orion flat-footed.

But like any title favorite, Estudiantes stormed back, but not without a fair share of controversy. Gata Fernandez's effort was adjudged to have been handled by Lisandro Lopez in the area. While a penalty may have been merited, referee Diego Abal shocked everyone by handing Lopez a red card, an incident that completely reshaped the landscape of the match.

Mauro Boselli stepped up to score the ensuing penalty before Cristian Cellay rose to head home Jose Sosa's corner just three minutes later to restore Estudiantes' position at the top of the standings.

Crowd trouble marred the rest of the match, but Estudiantes held on for the victory and will now turn their attention once again to the Copa Libertadores and their match against San Luis Wednesday night.

At the same time that Estudiantes was overcoming an early goal, Argentinos was doing the same away at San Lorenzo. Emiliano Alfaro gave the home side the lead five minutes before the interval thanks to less than stellar keeping from Nicolas Peric in the Argentinos goal. 

In the second half, Argentinos took the initiative and got a double Ismael Sosa, who opened his account on the hour, clipping the ball past Pablo Migliore from Federico Dominguez's cross. 

Then just before the end, Sosa struck again, assuring that they will remain just one point by Estudiantes before welcoming Indpendiente this coming weekend. 

Independiente, having already seen the earlier results, knew they had to win the Clasico against Boca to ensure their tie against Argentinos still had title implications. 

Unlike Estudiantes and Argentinos, El Rojo actually jumped out to an early lead thanks to Ignacio Piatti's strike after great work down the left flank from captain Lucas Mareque, but the home side were begged back by Boca when Luciano Monzon's low strike just got past Adrian Gabbarini. 

Gabbarini, who had been arguably the player of the tournament, was far from his best last night, and was culpable when he strayed off his line but still allowed Martin Palermo to flick a header home from a nearly impossible angle. 

Three minutes from time, substitute Pablo Mouche struck a long range goal, but was sent off for excessive celebration while trying to rile up the Independiente fans, but the damage was already done. 

Leonel Nunez added a stoppage time penalty for Independiente, but there was no time to take advantage of their numerical superiority and Independiente fell, leaving them five points behind Estudiantes and four behind four behind Argentinos. 

Even with a victory next week, it unlikely that Independiente can get their way back into the title race, which seems to have come down to the top two: Estudiantes and Argentinos.