Cerro Porteño secured a 3-1 victory over Deportivo Recoleta in the eighth round of the Professional Division Clausura, played at Estadio Luis Alberto Salinas Tanasio on September third. The result shifted both sides in the table, with the visitors closing on the hosts despite beginning the match in lower position.
Pablo Vegetti opened the scoring in the fourteenth minute, then doubled his tally before half-time in the thirty-fourth. Iván Ramírez added a third for Cerro Porteño in the forty-fourth, giving the visitors a commanding position before the interval. Deportivo Recoleta pulled one back through Marcos Antonio Pereira Esteche in the fifty-second, but the deficit proved too large to overcome.
Both managers made changes around the half-hour mark, with Deportivo Recoleta bringing on Juan Falcon, Alejandro Silva and Gustavo Velázquez in the forty-fifth minute. Cerro Porteño responded with Fernando Galeano, Pablo Gamarra and Facundo Ariel Echeguren Zarza, followed by Ignacio Aliseda and Luis Cardozo. Vegetti himself was substituted in the eighty-eighth minute, having done enough damage to set up the evening.
By then, the statistics told a clear story. Cerro Porteño registered six shots on target from twelve attempts, while Deportivo Recoleta managed only two on target from nine. Both sides controlled possession at fifty percent, but the visitors converted their chances with far greater precision.
The hosts had nine attacks against the guests' one hundred and five, though that figure alone does not explain the efficiency gap. Wilfrido Baez and José Espínola collected yellow cards in the second half, while the Cerro Porteño goalkeeper made just one save compared to three for his counterpart. The result leaves Deportivo Recoleta on four points in sixth place, one ahead of Cerro Porteño's three points in eighth.
