Deportivo Maipú edged Quilmes 1-0 in the Primera Nacional's regular season round 26 on Saturday evening. The result leaves the hosts eighth on 38 points, with Quilmes remaining in thirteenth place on 32 after their twenty-seventh match of the campaign.
And here's the thing — the only real moment of the evening came when L. Cabrera buried his goal in the fiftieth minute. Maipú had been living dangerously after R. Martinez picked up a yellow card in the forty-fourth, but the hosts held firm. Quilmes came for a cross they never reached, and by then the visitors had already thrown bodies in the way.
To be fair, the statistics told a different story. Quilmes enjoyed 59 per cent possession and registered 73 attacks against Maipú's 64, yet they managed just two shots on target from six attempts off target. The hosts, with less than half the ball, found the back of the net once from four attempts on goal. It is not often you see a team dominate possession and still leave with nothing.
The yellow card count told its own tale. Quilmes accumulated six bookings against Maipú's single card, though the disciplinary tally did not reflect the tension in the final quarter. N. Colazo and P. Bonacci both went to the referee's notebook in the last ten minutes, as the home side refused to go away.
For Maipú, this extends their unbeaten run to five matches and provides a buffer in the middle of the table. Quilmes, meanwhile, continue to stare at the drop, their recent form of three wins and two draws in five games offering little comfort when they sit five points from safety. The gap between eighth and thirteenth remains exactly five points, and neither side has much room to breathe.