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Game: Club Santos Laguna S.A. de C.V. vs. Fútbol Club Juárez
Date: Sunday, July 28th
Time: 7:45 p.m. Eastern, 6:45 p.m. Central, 4:45 p.m. Pacific, 11:45 p.m. UTC
Venue: Estadio Corona TSM (Torreón, Coah.)
Referees: REF: Erick Yair Miranda Galindo, AR1: Michel Alejandro Morales Morales, AR2: Juan Carlos Salinas Salinas, 4TH: Marco Antonio Ortiz Nava
Television: United States - FOX Sports 2, FOX Deportes Network; Mexico - Fox Sports 2 Cono Norte
Streaming: fuboTV (Free trial + monthly subscription), Sling TV (Free trial + monthly subscription), FOX Sports GO
All-time record: This will be the first time the teams will face one another in league play. They’ve met before in Copa MX play in the 2016 Apertura and 2017 Apertura tournaments. In that, Santos has won two of the four matches played while the clubs drew the other two. Santos has one win and one draw in Torreón against FC Juárez.
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Santos Laguna (1W 0D 0L) looks to make it two in a row at home as they host FC Juárez (0W 0D 1L). Santos had a convincing 3-0 win over Guadalajara last week while Juárez fell 1-0 to Santos’ sister club Atlas (Atlas and Santos are both owned by Grupo Orlegi Sports).
Santos looked good on both sides of the ball against Chivas, with Brian Lozano continuing to develop into an elite inside forward. The Uruguayan was a menace along the left side of the pitch, hitting crosses that found the head of Matheus Doría and the foot of Julio Furch for two of the three Santos goals. The other was a thunderous free kick from distance by none other than Lozano.
Santos also looked strong on defense. Jonathan Orozco only had to face one shot on goal during the entire match, which came in the 85th minute long after the game was out of reach.
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Juárez will need to play much better than they did against Atlas if they’re to get anything at all against Santos. They’ll also be up against it since defensive midfielder Elsinho will most likely be out with a back injury he suffered against Atlas. Luckily for Los Bravos, Paraguayan forward Dario Lezcano finally received his international transfer certificate and could be available for the match. He’s coming from FC Ingolstadt 04, who now play in the German 3.Bundesliga.
Juárez has plenty of players that Liga MX fans may recognize. Edy Brambila and Ángelo Sagal have been around the league, and Beto Acosta, Mauro “El Rayo” Fernández, Israel “El Piloto” Jiménez,Enrique Palos, Manuel Viniegra, Jesús Delgado, and Eder Borelli are all either on loan from Tigres or former Tigres players.
It will be an uphill battle for Juárez. They will need to play at their best and hope that Santos is taking them for granted, which does not seem very likely given Santos manager Guillermo Almada’s intensity and focus.