Córdova reunites Tigres with a final in the post “Tuca” era

tigers is back in a final of Liga MXa stage to which he returns after four years and with maximum motivation after having eliminated his staunch rival in the penultimate battle, Rayados de Monterrey, who had also finished the regular season as the overall leader. The cats won 0-1 in the second leg semifinal and with it tied a 1-2 aggregate.

After drawing 1-1 in the first leg, played at “El Volcán”, tigers he had to win on his visit to the BBVA stadium by any score to guarantee his ticket to the final of the Closing 2023. For their part, any draw was enough for Rayados to achieve said classification, but in the final minutes that scenario was erased.

Until minute 70 of the second leg semifinal, the dynamics of the game had its two well-defined poles: Tigres winning possession and trying to get closer to the rival goal, while Rayados only waited in the background and gave up the ball. It was a play-with-fire narrative for Monterrey, as a goal against in the last 20 minutes would put everything under intense pressure.

Despite that, the play was working out for him. striped, because at minute 76 they found a goal from their defender, Héctor Moreno, taking advantage of a bad start from the rival goalkeeper, Nahuel Guzmán, and a very broken assist from Luis Romo. At that moment the BBVA stadium exploded, as well as the bench players and the coaching staff. Monterrey was ratifying its ticket to the final.

But in a matter of seconds the smile of the nearly 50,000 attendees at the so-called ‘Steel Giant’ faded. The central referee, Luis Enrique Santander, was called by his colleagues from the VAR room and informed that there was an offside in Moreno’s score. The goal was disallowed and, with less than 15 minutes remaining, Tigres came back to life.

The feline coach, Robert Dante Siboldi, did everything in his power to ensure that his team took the lead in those last moments. He filled his lineup with attackers, including Nicolás Ibáñez, ‘Diente’ López, Luis Quiñones and Diego Lainez off the bench to add to the skills of André-Pierre Gignac and Sebastián Córdova.

The formula worked for Siboldi instantly, because at 79′, less than five minutes after the disallowed goal against Monterrey, it was Tigres who took the lead 0-1. Quiñones sent a cross from the right wing that the Rayados defense did not control and Sebastián Córdova came from the bottom to score with a header.

The narrative of the match changed completely: now it was tigers who had the ticket in his hands for the first time in the 180 minutes of the series (remembering that Monterrey was the first to score in the first leg semifinal) and it was up to coach Víctor Manuel Vucetich to abound in attackers to try to reverse the situation in 10 minutes and added time.

Rayados no longer had their best scorer in the regular season, Rogelio Funes Mori, who had to leave because he suffered a cut to the head at the end of the first half that caused him to bleed, but he had other tools such as Germán Berterame, Rodrigo Aguirre, Joao Rojas and Jordi Cortizo, who entered with the rush to save history.

That no longer happened. In the final minutes, Monterrey only had one play of real danger when Cortizo took a ball rolling at the height of the penalty mark that was blocked by a double sweep between Córdova and Javier Aquino. Television captured Vucetich’s contorted face immediately after that action, as he knew that this was the greatest chance to tie and return his team to the final.

The six minutes that Santander added were no longer of much use and tigers celebrated between leaps and tears when the final was over, marking his return to a final of Liga MX since the Clausura 2019, when they won their seventh and last title, at that time still directed by Ricardo “Tuca” Ferretti.

The most applauded man for the cats was Sebastián Córdova, and the clapping not only corresponded to this passionate series against Monterrey, but also because he has scored in each of the five games that Tigres has played in this league since the playoff against Puebla and through the quarterfinals against Toluca, becoming the amulet to reach the fight for the title.

Córdova has been the decisive player for Tigres in the final phase: he scored the only goal for the victory against Puebla in the play-off at minute 56; he started the comeback against Toluca in the first leg quarterfinals at ‘El Volcán’ at 14′, after the Red Devils went 0-1 at 8′; he revived his team also against Toluca in the quarter-round with a header at 71 ‘after allowing himself to be tied on aggregate 4-4; and against Rayados he scored the tie in the first leg and the final tie in the second leg.

The 25-year-old midfielder is seeking, with a leading role, his first Liga MX title after he was denied during his time in America between 2019 and 2021. Now with Tigres, with a team full of experienced players in finals such as Gignac, Guzmán , Guido Pizarro and Rafael Carioca, hope to take that step next weekend.

At the institution level, Tigres returned to the finals path and reached its eighth since the 2010s, where it has a record of five titles and two runners-up. The cats from Monterrey will seek their eighth Liga MX trophy (against América or Chivas) to tie León for the fifth highest number in history, separating themselves from Pumas and Pachuca, who have seven, and to be only one behind Cruz Blue.