LDU Portoviejo and 22 de Julio shared the points in a 2:2 draw at the Relegation Group stage of Liga Pro Serie B on 24 September 2026. Four goals came in the space of an hour and a half, with the visitors leaving Portoviejo with something from the match they had not expected. The result keeps both sides in the relegation battle, though the weight of it falls differently on each side.
The opener arrived in the twenty-first minute, and by then the pattern was set for a game that would not settle. Twenty-one minutes in and the hosts took the lead, but twenty-nine minutes into the second half came the equaliser. Sixty-six minutes saw the visitors take advantage of a momentary switch-off, and by the seventy-ninth minute LDU Portoviejo had clawed back to salvage a point.
And here's the thing about this kind of match — it is decided in three or four moments, and the rest is just noise. The hosts had more of the ball in the second half, but possession does not mean much when you are chasing. To be fair, 22 de Julio had been in a rut, losing four of their last five before this, and that desperation showed in how they pressed. One mistake ends it, and both sides made them.
The numbers tell a story that does not quite match the result. LDU Portoviejo registered eleven shots off target against five for their visitors, yet the final tally was level. The away side earned twenty-two free kicks to the hosts' five, a sign of how the game broke down in midfield.
Nine points separate the two sides in the table, with LDU Portoviejo sitting ninth on twenty-seven points and 22 de Julio eleventh on fifteen. The hosts have won seven and drawn six from twenty-two games, while the visitors have managed only four victories. That gap matters less now. Both sides need to recover from this pattern of slipping points.
We had backed the hosts at seventy-three per cent confidence before kick-off, and the match went another way entirely. What broke the prediction was not a single moment but the way 22 de Julio refused to fold. They came for a cross they never reached, but they stayed in the game.
