Alebrijes de Oaxaca beat Tepetitlan 1-0 in the Apertura fourth round of Liga de Expansión MX on Thursday. The hosts dominated possession at 74 per cent and took all three points despite playing the second half a man down. Tepetitlan were reduced to ten men after 21 minutes and then lost another player inside the final quarter.
And here's the thing about this match — it wasn't decided by the scoreboard until the 54th minute. Alebrijes had 14 shots, three on target, but Tepetitlan's goalkeeper made two saves and the visitors held on through sheer stubbornness. By then the game was already tilted, even if Tepetitlan didn't realise it.
The turning point came when Andrey Marcos found the net, but the real shift was earlier. D. Villalpando went off with a red card in the 21st minute and Tepetitlan never recovered their shape. They had 26 per cent possession, eight crosses with only one successful, and managed just one shot on target the rest of the way.
A. Estrada's dismissal in the 72nd minute made it brutally simple. Tepetitlan had two red cards to Alebrijes' none. The visitors finished with 180 passes against 496, and their goalkeeper was called into action twice while Alebrijes' keeper made just one save all evening.
To be fair, the statistics tell the whole story. Alebrijes created two big chances and had 11 key passes compared to Tepetitlan's two. They won 31 aerial duels against 20, but Tepetitlan did manage 10 tackles to three. The disparity was in attack, not defence.
The result leaves Alebrijes 13th with seven points from seven games and Tepetitlan 16th with three. Both sides have lost more than they've won, but Alebrijes' recent form included a 2-0 victory over Tlaxcala on August 6th. Tepetitlan's last outing was a 5-0 defeat to CA La Paz — a scoreline that says everything.