Snak

Maria’s Son

Josemir Abreu had intended only to watch the pickup soccer match, his mother said. He was an attendant at the post office in Pio XII and had spent the weekend visiting a sister. She lived a few houses from the neighborhood field in Centro do Meio. At the last minute, his mother said, Abreu had been recruited to play.

Two days earlier, he had celebrated his 30th birthday. He prayed at home with his wife, and cake and soda were served at a small party.

As a teenager, Abreu had fathered a son and had quit school to begin working, his mother said. He had since married a teacher and was taking classes toward completing high school. He was the third of Maria Abreu’s five children. She described Josemir as a dutiful son who was affectionate with his nieces and nephews and wanted another child of his own. His nickname was Mimi.

“He really liked sports,” Maria Abreu said. “He never got involved in other things.”

On the soccer field, Abreu was a sturdy midfielder known for an aggressive style and for playing with epilepsy. It was Maria Abreu’s folk belief that her son had contracted the neurological disorder by falling out of a tree when he was 13.

Sometimes Abreu grew agitated during the stress of a match and on occasion experienced seizures, falling to the ground, local players said. His mother said he took medication to keep himself calm and control his convulsions.

“He always wanted to fight with us,” said Leonildo Lima, a player from the nearby neighborhood of Vila Batalha.

Abreu could be a little unpredictable, said Leonardo Lima Ferreira, 21, Leonildo’s brother. But there was always going to be muscular play, heated disagreements, even in a pickup game. Everyone knew how to deal with it. When tempers boiled, players were separated until their anger lost steam.

“We never expected this,” Ferreira said. “They were both our friends.”

Abreu and Cantanhede were different ages and in different stages of their lives, but they sometimes played on the same pickup team. Friends and relatives said they won a neighborhood championship a week or so before the game in Centro do Meio and went to have beer in the plaza.

In February, when Cantanhede was stabbed during Carnival, Abreu visited him in the hospital, according to Abreu’s wife and a friend of Cantanhede’s.

“They weren’t great friends, but they knew each other through football,” said Leticia Abreu, Josemir’s wife.

Four months later, Cantanhede and Abreu began the match in Centro do Meio on opposite teams. Then Cantanhede became hobbled and had trouble running, players said. So he became the referee.

Deadly Fight

About 15 or 20 minutes into the second half, Cantanhede issued a yellow-card caution to Abreu. Numerous explanations were given: Abreu protested too vehemently when Cantanhede made a call in favor of his own brother, George. Abreu kicked the ball prematurely after a halt in play or complained that the other team did. He touched the ball with his hand. He raised his leg dangerously high.

Many versions of what happened next emerged in affidavits and interviews with players, witnesses and two suspects charged with homicide in Cantanhede’s death. Some accounts were sharper, some blurrier. Each was refracted through a lens of chaos, the blinkers of friendship and, for some, the warp of alcohol. Abreu dared to be given a red card and said he would not leave the field unless Cantanhede also left, some players recalled. George Cantanhede, 18, told the police in an affidavit that he ushered his brother to the sideline and that Otávio told him, “Keep calm.”

Some players thought it was settled. An older man intervened. Cantanhede and Abreu seemed ready to go home. Instead, words were said that could not be taken back.

Cantanhede called Abreu a clown, and Abreu called Cantanhede’s late mother a whore, said Hudson Lima, a teammate of Cantanhede’s.

Abreu punched Cantanhede and kicked him behind the leg, some players said. Cantanhede went to the ground, and when he got up, he had a knife in his hand. The length of the weapon expanded or contracted with each telling of the story. Five inches. Ten inches. Some witnesses saw Cantanhede draw the knife from inside his shorts. Lima said it came from a backpack. It has not been found by the police.

Abreu was stabbed twice on the left side, once in the chest, once in the ribs. He fell at the edge of the field. The chest wound struck his heart, doctors said. A man who lived across from the field drove Abreu to the hospital. Someone found a rope, and Cantanhede was tied up so he could not escape.

“If he was let go, he would be in a nearby city and no one would have done anything to him,” said a player who asked that his name not be used because he feared reprisals. “He’d be laughing.”

São Sebastião Hospital, in Pio XII, Brazil, where Josemir Abreu was pronounced dead and Otávio Cantanhede was taken after he was beheaded.
A number of calls were made to the police in Pio XII, witnesses said. Lima, Cantanhede ‘s teammate, said he called seven times himself, only to get a recording: Officers were out of service range.

Gruesome Reprisal

Luiz Morais de Souza stood just beyond the soccer field, drinking a potent sugarcane liquor called cachaça. A cheap brand, known as 51, had an alcohol content of 39 percent and was said to go from the stomach to the brain like a missile.

By his own estimation, de Souza drank three bottles of cachaça that Sunday. This seemed an extreme exaggeration, or suggested a severe drinking problem, the authorities said. It would be difficult for a man to stay on his feet with so much alcohol in his belly.

However much he drank, de Souza said he was too wobbly to continue in the game after halftime. Two players said he was removed because he was drunk. One described him leaving the field with a bottle of cachaça tucked under his arm like a newspaper.

A driver and mechanic, de Souza had traveled from 50 miles away that weekend to visit his grandmother in Pio XII. His 27th birthday was the next day. He had known Josemir Abreu since childhood. Abreu was godfather to his niece. They were almost related.

Word quickly spread about the stabbing. People came and went from the soccer field. Some arrived on foot, others on motorcycles. Twenty people seemed to gather, then more. Some went to the hospital, others made phone calls. Adrenaline and alcohol stretched time and compressed it, fermented details, stirred the order of things.

Surrounded, tied with a rope, Cantanhede pleaded to be handed over to the authorities, the police said.

“Why did you stab Josemir?” de Souza said he asked Cantanhede.

“To revenge the death of my mother.”

“Who killed her?”

“A truck driver.”

It was not clear whether the men who pressed around Cantanhede began their revenge immediately or waited to hear that Abreu was dead. De Souza said he hit Cantanhede in the face with a bottle of cachaça and beat him on the head with a wooden stake found on the ground.

“Josemir was raised with us,” de Souza said. “He was a good guy. Otávio didn’t have any motive to kill him like that.”

George Cantanhede, Otávio’s brother, was threatened and rode away on a friend’s motorcycle. Traumatized, he moved in with an uncle and would not talk about what he saw.

Raimundo da Costa Marçal, a farmworker, drove past on a motorcycle. He said he was headed to buy a chicken when he saw people running. A young boy told him that Abreu had been stabbed. The man who did it was tied up on the field.

Marçal rode into the crowd. He said he asked Cantanhede why he had stabbed Abreu. Cantanhede had not meant to do it. It happened in the moment.

“He just stared at me,” Marçal said.

By that time, Marçal said he had shared about 30 beers, and wine and cachaça, at a bar with a friend. He called himself “very drunk.” As he left the field, he fell off his motorcycle.

Days later, Marçal, 31, would turn himself into the police and be charged with homicide. He would sign a confession, saying he rode over Cantanhede three times.

The attackers were not finished. Josimar de Sousa, the man who had shared beers with Marçal, stabbed Cantanhede in the throat, the police said. He fled and was believed to have left Maranhão.

Francisco Edson Morais de Souza, Luiz’s brother, came from his home, carrying a sickle with a curved blade. Both brothers had been charged with burglarizing houses and pickpocketing, but had not been convicted, the police said. A family photograph of Francisco, 32, showed him with a trim mustache and a nose that seemed to have been on the other end of a fist.

He was widely described as a heavy drinker and user of drugs. On this afternoon, the police said, Francisco was “completely out of his mind.” He swung his sickle at one man on his way to the field. He shouted. He warned that he would kill anyone who got in his way. He beheaded Cantanhede, the police said, and tried to quarter him.

Teresa Ferreria, 52, a farmworker who lived adjacent to the field, saw Francisco holding Cantanhede’s head like a trophy. She was afraid to leave her porch. Francisco placed Cantanhede’s head on a post on a barbed wire fence, the police and witnesses said. Then Francisco left. One man saw him sitting in the middle of the road.

Calls came into São Sebastião Hospital. Someone had been dismembered. Almerinda Alves Sousa, a nurse, gathered extra plastic bags. She was met at the field by an ambulance and another nurse, Jane Cantanhede, Otávio’s aunt.

They waited a half-hour for the police, Sousa said. She called and asked if officers planned to record video of the scene. The reply, she said, was, “Film it yourselves.”

It was getting dark. A motorcycle shined its headlight on Cantanhede’s body, and Sousa pointed her cellphone.

Jane Cantanhede removed her nephew’s head from the fence post. She let out a small cry. She later told the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo: “If they had just killed him, they would have gotten their revenge. Did they have to cut him up the way they did?”

Cantanhede’s body was cleaned and sutured and bandaged at the hospital. Abreu’s body was mended, too, and both sons were returned that night to their families. Unconcerned about the police, Luiz and Francisco de Souza attended Abreu’s wake and helped dig his grave.

The Police

At 11 the next morning, Valter Costa dos Santos, the regional police chief, received a phone call. Thin and fit at 44, with a receding hairline, dos Santos wore jeans and cowboy boots. His sidearm protruded from a flap in his sports coat. The ring tone on his cellphone played the calming sound of sea gulls.

He could not believe what he was hearing. It must be a lie. He drove 20 miles from his office to Pio XII for hideous confirmation.

Vital hours had been lost. The suspects had gone into hiding. And no autopsy report had been written before Cantanhede was buried.

Dr. Rafael Oliveira, who was not on hospital duty the night of the killings, wrote a belated report as the police investigation began. Unable to examine Cantanhede’s body, he based the autopsy on photographs and video taken by hospital workers.

Without an established cause of death, anyone arrested might walk free. The case might be closed.

“Justice likes paperwork here,” Oliveira said.

On July 2, two days after the killings, dos Santos and his investigators traced Luiz de Souza to the town where he lived 50 miles away. He was spotted in a house that appeared to be uninhabited. The giveaway was a bottle of water and a cup left on the windowsill.

For more than a week, dos Santos and his team tracked Francisco de Souza through thick woods at night. They had no dogs to assist them, only their instincts and word of an occasional sighting. Francisco was said to be carrying a machete. A month passed, then two. A few people had claimed to see Francisco. He was reported to be bearded and extremely skinny. He kept eluding police.

Dos Santos had two theories about what sparked the killings. One, Cantanhede carried a knife to the match with “bad intentions.” Two, Cantanhede was fearful and felt he needed protection, even among friends, because his refereeing had been criticized in a previous match.
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“He wanted to be the authority on the field,” dos Santos said. “The only way he had to impose authority was violence.”

He considered the killings a cultural issue. He spoke of the despair of poverty and lack of education. People did not want to be humiliated in front of their friends. They often overreacted when confronted.

“The law of the strongest is what prevails,” dos Santos said.

Still, one death did not have to become two, dos Santos said. The response of the Pio XII police, he added, “really disappointed me.”

That Sunday, the chief of police in Pio XII was on vacation and two officers were on patrol, dos Santos said. One of the officers said they were working in another neighborhood that lacked a cellphone signal and never received the calls from Centro do Meio. There was a discrepancy. Some witnesses told dos Santos they did speak with the police.

Cantanhede was tied up for perhaps an hour, maybe longer, by most estimates. If the local police had come, dos Santos said, Cantanhede could have been arrested instead of killed. The law of the state might have prevailed over the law of retribution.

Some people apparently had tried to do the right thing. They restrained Cantanhede and called the authorities. Maybe the two local police officers were afraid of the crowd, dos Santos said. They could have asked for reinforcements.

“It is a shame that this happened because of the police not acting,” dos Santos wrote in a summation of the case.

Facing 30 Years

The pretrial detention center in the town of Santa Inês, 20 miles from Pio XII, had double rows of razor wire and smelled of disinfectant. Prisoners hung laundry in a sun room on a morning in mid-September. Country music wafted from the Bar of Love, a tavern across the street. Luiz de Souza wore a T-shirt and shorts. He was handcuffed. He wore a hat and a thin beard. His hands trembled, and he picked at his thumbs. He had quit school after first grade to fish with his father. His handwriting was wavy and childlike. Sometimes he spelled his name Luiz, other times Luis.

He faces 30 years in prison if convicted of homicide. He had found religion and inked it on his arms. One tattoo said, “God is faithful.” The other said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

He did not remember much, de Souza said. Only that he had been drinking and he hit Cantanhede in the face with a bottle of rum and a wooden stake. And he would have to pay for what he did. If he had been sober — “in a good state” — he does not think it would have happened.

“I repent,” de Souza said.

Raimundo Marçal sat with him, also wearing a T-shirt and shorts and handcuffs. He was paunchy, with a full face and thin sideburns. The names of his two children were tattooed on his arm.

He had finished high school and worked in a fancy hotel in Rio, then returned to the rural life in Centro do Meio. No one in his family had been in trouble with the law, he said.

Marçal had hired a lawyer and recanted his confession. It was a lie that he had driven over Cantanhede three times with a motorcycle, he said. He had only bumped him with the front tire.

“I never ran over him,” Marçal said.

He blamed the absent police for what happened in Pio XII. And alcohol.

If he had not been at the bar, Marçal said, he probably would not have gone to the soccer field. He would not be charged with homicide. He would not face three decades away from his children.

“One person feeds off another: ‘Let’s beat him,’ ” Marçal said. “You might not have the courage to do it, but someone else does.”

Shattered Families

José Cantanhede had meant to restore the house he bought a year ago, but it had all been too much for him. He had lost his wife in 2011. Now his eldest son was gone. He sat in his living room, the walls bare except for a clock and two calendars and photos of his granddaughters and the patron saint of Brazil.

He was 60, a laborer. He wore shorts and sat without a shirt, his tanned skin the color of almonds. When he talked about his son, his eyes watered.

“I think anyone would have done what he did in that moment,” José Cantanhede said.

His thoughts circled and collided against themselves. If he had not been sick at home that afternoon, Cantanhede said, he would be dead, too, because he would have gone to the field to defend his son. Why didn’t the police come? Why didn’t any of the players step in and say, wait, stop, this has gone too far?

“How much time have I spent breaking up small fights in the middle of a game?” he said. “No one needed to die.”

A few miles away, in another neighborhood, Maria Abreu, 50, sat on her back porch. Her daughter read the Bible. The house was once a store. A sign painted on the front said, “Snacks sold here.”

Abreu worked as a janitor in a bank. She had light green eyes. She seemed worn out. She could not sleep. She could not stop crying. Josemir had always obeyed her, she said. She could not imagine her son dying at a neighborhood soccer match, stabbed to death two days after his birthday.

There were still many rumors about what happened, but Maria Abreu did not want to know anything that was not proved.

“I don’t have the head to listen to anyone,” she said.

A month after the killings, a formal game was organized in Centro do Meio. A peace match it was called. On a weekend in mid-September, a pickup game was played on half of the field. Two goalkeepers stood in the same goal for reinforcement. They joked. It was only for fun. Otherwise, the field went vacant.

A man took a driving lesson on the grass in a borrowed car. A donkey grazed on the sideline. A young girl climbed a tamarind tree. Sometimes the girl rode the donkey to collect coconuts when they fell to the ground.

José Cantanhede visited the cemetery where his wife and son were buried. After two years he waited, still, for the ground to settle before having a cement tomb built for his wife. He pointed to other tombs built in grief and haste and how they were cracked and crumbling.

That They May Face the Rising Sun

André Alves Leso and Guilherme Vinicius Jovanelli Moreira, in all likelihood, had never met Jefferson Firmino da Silva. But the three had more than a little in common. All were young, working class Brazilians. All were members of a torcida organizaa group, André and Guilherme of Mancha Alvi Verde (Palmeiras), Jefferson of Inferno Coral (Santa Cruz). And all now can be added to Brazil’s staggeringly long list of murder victims.

The deaths of André and Guilherme have attracted less public sympathy than that of Jefferson. André was shot in the head on a Sunday morning earlier this month, during a pre-arranged battle royale between Mancha Alvi Verde and Gaviões da Fiel (Corinthians) members in the north of São Paulo, several hours before that day’s clássico. He died in hospital two days later. Guilherme was beaten severely during the same briga, and also died in hospital a few days afterwards.

The confrontation along Avenida Inajar de Souza was considered a form of revenge for the death of Gaviões member Douglas Silva, whose body was found floating in São Paulo’s Tietê River last year. Around 500 men, carrying rocks, bats and sticks, and in some cases, firearms, took part. Opinions differ as to how the fight came about – some say it was agreed upon by both sides, while an official statement on the Mancha Alvi Verde website says that their members were ambushed on the way to the Pacaembu.

Either way, senior São Paulo police officer Margarette Barreto found it hard to see many innocent victims. We’re not dealing with little boys here, she said. They’re the type of individuals who rejected a police escort to the ground, and decided to provide their own escort, with guns…it’s hardly Little Red Riding Hood lost in the forest.

In response, the São Paulo Football Federation has banned the two organizadas from stadiums in the state, and police have seized computers from the groups’ headquarters. A number of men have been arrested, including at least one senior member of the Gaviões da Fiel.

Up in the nordeste, the circumstances surrounding the death of Jefferson, a young man with no criminal record, who was a baterista in the Inferno Coral’s drum section, were less complicated, and, depressingly, far more commonplace. On the night of February 15th he was, like most of the population of Recife, in the streets enjoying carnaval – in this case a bloco near his home in the lower class neighbourhood of Beberibe, under the shadow of Santa’s giant Arruda stadium. The bloco was set upon by a gang and wallets and cell phones were stolen. Jefferson retaliated and was severely beaten. He would die in hospital from his injuries two weeks later.

The differences and the similarities between the deaths of the three young men reveal a great deal about the nature of football violence in Brazil. To many, the torcida organizadas are simply a cancer: mindless, aggressive thugs, capable of often shocking acts of ultra-violence. There were 42 violent deaths in Brazilian football stadiums between 1999 and 2009, and countless more football related killings in the often semi-lawless favelas and periferias of the country’s major urban centres. A feud between the organizadas of Vila Nova and Goiás, for example, in the comparatively tranquil mid-western city of Goiânia, has left six dead in the past year. No Brazilian football season would be complete without at least a handful of stories about homemade bombs being smuggled into stadiums, pitched battles being waged in the streets after clássicos, or the training ground of a struggling side being invaded by furious members of an organizada.

Simple hooligans, then, similar to those who rampaged across Britain and Europe in the 70s and 80s, and the principle reason for the retreat of the Brazilian middle class football fan from the stadium to the safety of his or her sofa or barstool.

But just as UK and European society is a world away from Brazil, so the torcida organizadas are very different to their northern counterparts, both in behaviour and origins. To begin with, depending on the club, the organizadas can number not in the hundreds but in the thousands. They are generally the loudest, most vibrant section of a club’s support, and organise pounding drum sections, enormous flags, and ticker tape and “mosaic” displays. The ferocity of their vocal backing is often in sharp contrast to the more middle class sócios sections of the ground, where most of the noise comes from the unrelenting criticism of coach and players.

And when, during a disappointing season or a run of defeats, the rest of the ground stands almost empty (as it often does in Brazil, where fans tend to pick and choose their games), the part occupied by the organizadas usually remains heavily populated, if not full. They are, in some ways, the perfect football fans – vociferous, steadfast, and true.

The groups form alliances with other organizadas across Brazil (the Força Jovem Vasco, Mancha Verde, Galoucura (Atlético Mineiro) and Inferno Coral axis is one of the biggest), and, when the team of an allied organizada comes to town, attendance in the away end, supporting the visitors against a local rival, is obligatory. When the clubs of two allied groups play each other, the organizadas mingle together, swapping flags and t-shirts in a chummy enough atmosphere.

The organizadas can even play a positive role in wider society. More than a few of the bigger groups, including Galoucura and Força Jovem Vasco, organise social projects, from crèches to capoeira classes, in an attempt to improve the quality of life of young people in disadvantaged local communities.

In short, applying the most hopeful possible interpretation, the organizadas give a sense of belonging, and a feeling of self-worth, to thousands of young men from underprivileged backgrounds, who more often than not have only a rudimentary education, few worthwhile career prospects, and a distinct lack of parental guidance, or indeed any kind of positive role models at all.

So far, so good, then. Except that thuggery remains the bloodied carcass of the elephant in the room. Violence, and the inherent belief that the value of a life is terrifyingly cheap, is as ingrained within the torcida organizadas as it is in large parts of wider Brazilian society.

And yet handwringing over the horrors carried out by certain individuals within the torcida organizadas, as with the old British hooligan gangs, rarely goes beyond simple platitudes of the they’re just animals, not proper supporters stripe. Not particularly informative, or even useful, and certainly not an explanation that might lead to any kind of understanding of the problem.

What is undeniable is that a football crowd, violent or otherwise, is generally a reflection of the society that surrounds it. In this sense, it is hardly surprising that guns and other deadly weapons from time to time raise their ugly heads in organizada gangs. Though the figure has recently been creeping downwards, over the last 30 years there have been around 35,000 violent deaths per year in Brazil, a considerably higher figure than the average annual tally in many war zones.

The vast majority of these deaths come in the favelas and periferia, where most organizada members hail from. Given the violence prevalent in the streets away from Brazil’s football grounds, then, it is not hard to see why for some, the rules of behaviour inside and around the stadium should be similarly savage, particularly given the tribal atmosphere football can generate, and the copious amounts of alcohol and other substances consumed prior to kick-off.

Then there is the question of to what extent a torcida organizada is even a single unit at all. For one of the great dichotomies of the organizadas is the name – organised support. In truth, aside from a generally quite small central core, which numbers in the hundreds rather than the thousands, there is very little formal structure to the groups. Given that for many, membership simply involves buying an Inferno Coral or Mancha Verde t-shirt for a few reais, and standing in the same place in the ground and singing the same songs, how could there be?

Furthermore, many organizada members have spent their short lives battling against authority in all its forms, be it teachers or Brazil`s often extremely heavy-handed, unpopular military police. Why then, would they suddenly begin to listen to pleas for calm and order from the leaders of their own organizada? Fights, feuds and rivalries within the same organizada, based on gang or territorial divisions, are common, and the pleas of more senior members for calm often fall on deaf younger ears.

In short, there is often not much that is organised about the organizadas. As such, it is arguable to what extent a torcida organizada group as a whole, the official, stated aim of which may simply be to support the team, can be held responsible for the actions of certain individuals or subgroups within it.

It is not the intention of this article to make excuses for the violence that runs like a scar through the torcida organizadas. Any claims of being simply innocent, victimized supporters ring hollow when the acceptance, encouragement, or even active participation in criminal activity is tolerated within the groups and inside their clubhouses, and the excuses provided by societal factors have their limits. Neither does the violent imagery of organizada paraphernalia help much – the badge of the Inferno Coral boasts a machine gun-toting cobra.

A visit, this Sunday just gone, to the Vila Nova v Goiás clássico in Goiânia provides plenty of examples of the themes discussed here. Around 7,000 Vila fans are present, most of them massed along the side of the big Serra Dourada stadium. In their midst, the red and white uniforms of the Esquadrão Vermelho (“Red Squadron”) organizada are clearly visible, their drums supplying the rhythms for the chanting of the boisterous, bouncing supporters. A few hundred yards away, behind the goal, a smaller, rather more truculent bunch, has gathered, and spend their time casting balefully aggressive glances up at the larger group of supporters. This is Sangue Colorado (“Red Blood”), embroiled in a feud with Esquadrão Vermelho following a complicated saga of arguments and rifts.

After the game, which passes off peacefully enough, and ends in a 3-2 Vila win, the good-natured celebrations of the victorious fans are cut short by tear gas and baton rounds courtesy of the Goiânia choque riot police. Later that night, after an arrastão (“mugging wave”) by a Goiás organizada gang, a Vila Nova supporter is shot and killed in Parque Vaca Brava, a wealthy part of the city.

In closing, it is clear that the problem with torcida organizada violence lies as much with Brazilian society as it does with football. Widespread British hooligan behaviour was driven to virtual extinction by a number of factors, among them the increased ticket prices and the gentrification of the game brought about by the Sky TV/Premier League revolution, and greater police understanding and treatment of supporters in the wake of Hillsborough and other tragedies.

Similar gentrification of the Brazilian game is a long way off, particularly away from the sul and sudeste, though the new and renovated stadiums being constructed for the 2014 World Cup are likely to change the footballing landscape considerably. Whether the torcida organizadas will have a place in this brave new world remains to be seen. If the robbing, killing and vandalism can somehow be eradicated, then it is to be hoped that they will, as the Brazilian game would in many ways be a poorer place without them.

Footnote: The title of this article is taken from the novel of the same name by the late Irish writer John McGahern, and refers to the belief that the dead should be buried with their feet pointing to the east, the better to see the rising sun on judgement day.

Saturday: Cruz Azul set for playoffs, Chiapas on the brink and for Tigres it’s complicated

With just a game remaining in the regular season, Cruz Azul booked their place in La Liguilla with a 1-0 win over Morelia, whose position is still uncertain. Joao Rojas’ close range finish after Federico Vilar had kept out Luis Perea’s initial header was enough to reach the playoffs and try to avenge last season’s heartbreak.

Chiapas are all but confirmed their spot after defeating high-flying Santos Laguna. Aviles Hurtado’s accurate finish gave Los Jaguares the lead and although Javier Orozco equalised, David Toledo scored the winner in the 66th minute.

The position of Tigres is a little more precarious after their 1-1 draw with Leon leaves them a point behind Queretaro in the final la liguilla spot.
Juninho gave Tigres the lead from the penalty spot after Guido Pizarro had been hauled down but Carlos Peña’s powerful finish in the second half gave Leon a deserved equaliser. Leon can begin preparations for the playoffs but Tigres will need a bit of luck on the final day to sneak in.

Elsewhere, Monterrey thumped Veracruz thanks to two fine goals from Chilean, Humberto Suazo, a first time strike from the edge of the box and a delightful lob, either side of a superb curling effort by Neri Cardoso.


CRUZ AZUL 1 – 0 MORELIA

http://www.youtube.com/w…gsrej6uD-AY

VERACRUZ 0 – 3 MONTERREY

http://www.youtube.com/w…MUf76J-cVlo

TIGRES 1 – 1 LEON
http://www.youtube.com/w…RJ8BXEdeW20


CHIAPAS 2 – 1 SANTOS LAGUNA

http://www.youtube.com/w…ZcOhvQ0KbX8

San Lorenzo er startet bedst, kæmpe chance til Correa efter fuck up af cata diaz...Flu-Fla er lige startet ....0-0 i Lima.

20 min spillet i B.A Correa har hafy 3 gode forsøg, + et hovedstød på stolpen...0-0 . 0-0 i Rio og Lima.

straffe til San lorenzo...