Real Santander beat Internacional Palmyra 3-1 in the Clausura seventh round of Primera B on Friday evening. The hosts took all three points from a match that looked settled on paper before the final whistle. And here's the thing — the result tells you nothing about who controlled the game for most of it.
M. Diaz opened the scoring in the fifty-sixth minute, tapping home after a period of sustained pressure. Earlier, both sides had picked up yellow cards — the first came at twenty-one minutes, another at thirty. By then, Internacional Palmyra were already feeling the weight of their position in the table.
R. Brochero doubled the lead just before the hour mark, catching the visitors off guard once more. The visitors, sitting second with fifty points from twenty-six games, had nothing to lose and everything to prove. They equalised quickly through M. Diaz in the seventy-sixth minute, and suddenly the evening was back in the balance.
But the game turned in the closing moments. Diaz completed his hat-trick in the ninety-first minute, and the clean-sheet run came to an end for Palmyra. The hosts made two substitutions in the seventy-seventh minute — J. Delgado and Habib both came on, fresh legs for a closing period. Three yellow cards for the visitors by then, including one at sixty-three minutes.
The statistics tell a different story. Palmyra had sixty percent possession and ninety-two attacks against the hosts' sixty-five, yet Real Santander hit five shots on target to their three. The visitors shot three times off target as well, but cannot afford another slip when this close to the top of the table.
The result leaves Real Santander fifteenth on sixteen points from twenty-one matches, while Internacional Palmyra remain second. The gap to the leaders hasn't changed, but the visitors have hit a wall they won't forget. By then, the hosts had already given nothing away and taken what they needed.
