Cruz Azul Hidalgo made it clear they meant business in the Liga de Expansión MX as they saw off Tepatitlan 6-0 in the sixth round of the Apertura at their home ground on Friday evening. The hosts, who had managed just one victory in five prior outings, showed a different side of their character and left the visitors with nothing to salvage. It was a result that shifted the tone of the fixture entirely, and by then it was already a matter of damage limitation for the away side.
The opening goal came in the thirtieth minute when E. Sanchez found the net, and Cruza Azul Hidalgo kept the pressure on for the remainder of the half. L. Derbez doubled the lead just before the break with a forty-fifth minute strike, while J. Godinez saw his penalty saved in the forty-second — a missed chance that would have given Tepatitlan a lifeline. The visitors' goalkeeper made four saves in total, but they could only watch as the deficit grew.
And here's the thing about second-half football: momentum shifts quickly when one side decides to attack. C. Valdivia added a third in the fifty-sixth minute, and though Tepatitlan made several changes — bringing on G. Sanchez, D. Villalpando and A. Moreno at the restart — they could not find any rhythm. A. A. Saavedra Nevarez and K. Gonzalez also went off for the hosts, while the visitors tossed on V. Taboada and others in a bid to change the game.
The floodgates opened late, with L. Derbez netting his second in the seventy-ninth minute, S. De Los Rios adding another in the ninety-first and X. Camacho scoring a fourth in stoppage time. Five goals in the final twenty minutes tells you everything about a match where one side had decided to take no prisoners. The yellow cards — five in total — were the only things keeping the game from becoming even more one-sided.
The statistics paint a picture of dominance. Cruz Azul Hidalgo held 66 per cent possession and registered eleven shots on target compared to three for the visitors. They created three big chances to Tepatitlan's one, and their 97 passes into the final third versus 25 from the away side showed where the attacking intent lay. Shots accuracy sat at 44 per cent for the hosts against 23 for the visitors — not a bad conversion rate when you consider how many chances went begging on the other end.
For Cruz Azul Hidalgo, this was their second win in six games and moved them off the bottom half with six points. Tepatitlan, meanwhile, remained rooted to sixteenth place with just three points from their opening six matches. They had lost five of those six, and while this result doesn't change their position, it does underline the gap between the two sides. The table goes out of the window in these games, but the gulf was on display for all to see.