Officially, Pachuca won Sunday's SuperLiga opener against Chivas USA when Gabriel Caballero scored in the 42nd minute to give los Tuzos an insurmountable lead which the Mexican side protected in a 2-1 win at The Home Depot Center.
Unofficially, though, the match was lost in the first few minutes.
Sacha Kljestan hit the crossbar and Claudio Suarez rattled a penalty kick off the left post in the first nine minutes of play. Although Ante Razov scored in the 16th minute, Chivas USA players said the opportunities lost did the team in.
"In the first few minutes I believe is when we lost the game," Suarez said. "If we would have made those two chances the game would have changed completely."
Fatigue could have drained the club from the start as Chivas USA had a league match on the same field on Thursday. The match -- a 1-1 league draw against the LA Galaxy -- took a lot out of Chivas USA players, and coach Preki sent out nine of the 11 starters from Thursday's match.
But fatigue did not play a factor early on.
"Coming out I thought we did pretty well," Chivas USA midfielder Jonathan Bornstein said. "Really early on we put in a lot of early energy and could have two or three goals pretty quickly."
Despite having played the Galaxy less than 72 hours before Sunday's kickoff, Chivas USA players came out with their motors running on full speed. Fatigue was not a factor at the start of the match as the Red-and-White appeared to have made getting an early goal top priority.
The goal nearly came -- twice, in fact -- but the club was not tidy enough to finish off scoring chances. First, Jonathan Bornstein raced into the penalty area and found Kljestan on the right side. Kljestan had the goal in front of him but could do no better than knock a shot off the woodwork in the third minute.
Five minutes later, Pachuca's Fausto Pinto handled a ball in the penalty area and was booked because of it. Suarez, who is usually a solid from the penalty spot, clanged a shot off the left post as Pachuca goalkeeper Miguel Calero dived the wrong way. The ball bounced far away from Chivas USA players and eventually rolled over the far touchline.
"It was one of those nights," Preki said.
Even the goal was hard to come by. Atiba Harris collected a ball on the right side and slipped a pass to the front of the goal towards Razov. Leobardo Lopez tried to clear the ball but instead sent it directly to Kljestan, who settled and found Razov. This time the ball got to him but Razov's shot also hit the crossbar. However, his ball bounced down and across the goal line.
"We barely squeezed that ball across the line," Preki said.
But for Preki, the match changed in Pachuca's favor in the 23rd minute. Francisco Mendoza took out a Pachuca attacker with a hard tackle but referee Carlos Batres called a foul and gave Mendoza a yellow card on top of it.
Gerardo Rodriguez found Bruno Marioni in front of the net moments later and the Argentinean striker buried the ball to level terms.
"We were solid and we didn't give anything away and then out of nothing the referee decides to give a silly free kick," Preki said. "It was the changing point of the whole game tonight because there's no way that's a free kick."
Bornstein agreed with his coach.
"I didn't think it was a foul. I was right behind him and I thought his tackle, he got all ball and the guy was just kind of in the way," Bornstein said. "The line ref I thought saw everything and he didn't call anything and the ref came from the middle of the field and gave him a yellow card. Once they got that, I think the game kind of changed."
The match stayed even until just before halftime when Rodriguez again sliced up Chivas USA's backline. From the left side of the field, Rodriguez picked out Caballero who easily placed his header into the back of the net.
The goal seemed to take away whatever momentum Chivas USA still had left.
"We got caught in the moment and lost our shape and focus a little bit," Preki said. "They are a very good team and when you give a team like that a moment or two they are going to punish you."
In the second half, Preki was forced to remove several of his starters because of tired legs. Jesse Marsch and Bobby Burling left the match in the 61st minute while Razov left the game eight minutes later. Carey Talley was subbed out in the 83rd minute as players such as Daniel Paladini, Kraig Chiles and Anthony Hamilton tried to find the elusive equalizer.
Despite the loss, the Red-and-White are not about to surrender quite yet.
"We're still in this tournament," Razov said. "We're not out of it yet and we're going to come out strong on Wednesday."
Luis Bueno is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
