Tacuary picked up a unexpected two points against fourth-placed Benjamín Aceval in the Divenión Intermedio's twenty-sixth round. The match finished 2:1 to the hosts, who had been struggling all season and were still rooted in sixteenth place. We had backed the visitors at 41 per cent confidence, but the game took a different path. The turning point came early, not with a goal but with a dismissal.
Bedoya's red card changed the shape of the evening
N. Palavecino opened the scoring in the twelfth minute, and Tacuary held on. Then, in the nineteenth minute, S. Bedoya received a straight red card and the visitors began to play with ten men. One mistake ends it when you are chasing a game. Benjamín Aceval pushed forward, but the numerical disadvantage made every attack harder to sustain. The hosts, by then, were simply sitting on their lead.
The second half brought more drama than the first. B. Diaz equalised for the visitors in the eighty-first minute, and for a moment it looked like the visitors would salvage something. But S. Benitez struck again in the ninetieth minute, and Benjamín Aceval had nothing to do all evening after that. The scoreline felt earned in the end, even if the flow had been entirely one-sided.
Statistics tell a story that does not match the result. Benjamín Aceval dominated possession at 66 per cent and registered 134 attacks compared with 72. They also took eight shots on target against five, yet only scored once. The visitors were left flat-footed by the red card and never quite recovered their rhythm. Tacuary, meanwhile, were left flat-footed by the opportunity to press, but they knew how to saw the game out.
The result keeps the visitors in fourth place with 42 points, three wins from their last five matches. Tacuary remain in sixteenth with 21 points, having now drawn three of their last five games. The gap between the sides is still 21 points, but the match itself was decided in those twenty minutes after Bedoya's dismissal. There is no value left at that number when you are chasing a lead and have ten men to cover twelve.
