With two goals from Luis Suarez and two others from the Argentine Emmanuel Gigliotti, National won the Uruguayan Championship this Sunday after defeating Liverpool 1-4 in a semifinal that allowed him to be crowned for having conquered the accumulated Annual Table.
After a first half in which he was far from his best version, the ‘Gunman’ only needed six minutes of the second half to score the first after eluding his marker with a tunnel inside the area. And although in the 68th minute Liverpool equalized after a well-executed penalty by Thiago Vecino, the locals’ hopes of continuing long collapsed when the referee sent off central defender Federico Pereira.
The 1-1 draw in the 90 minutes took the game to extra time, where Nacional asserted the extra player it had and became a steamroller.
Seven minutes after the start of extra time, after a great play by Diego Zabala and Leandro Lozano, Suárez received inside the area and left the rival goalkeeper without options with a powerful shot.
Nacional was up 1-2 and from there the rainy afternoon in Montevideo was painted red, white and blue. Closer than ever to the title, the 50,000 fans who arrived at the stadium did not stop singing and cheering on their team that sentenced the game minutes later.
Gigliotti with a great goal at 107 minutes put the third with an exquisite definition over the rival goalkeeper and six minutes later he sentenced the clash after another great play by the side Camilo Cándido.
The Tricolor thus sealed a categorical 1-4 and established itself as Uruguayan champion in a season that was marked by the arrival of Luis Suárez in July, after an impressive move carried out by the fans.
With the end of the match, Nacional put the finishing touch to the day and also to a season in which they won the Intermediate Tournament, the Clausura Tournament and the Uruguayan Championship. The soccer players celebrated it on the lawn of the Centennial, where Suárez said goodbye crying, celebrated with his family and greeted the fans at the meeting that marked his farewell.
The national team’s historic scorer will leave Uruguay in the coming days to play the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, before starting a new adventure in a team that is currently unknown.
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