Argentinean Second Half Kicks off with surprises

The second part of the Argentinean soccer season started with some surprises. Boca Juniors, Rosario Central, Independiente, Racing and Olimpo, Velez Sarsfield and Colon all played with shockers.

It's difficult to explain, but February marks the start of the second half of the season with a completely separate championship from the first half's season. The two halves of the seasons are called the "opening" and "closing".

The shockers were the superpower and perennial favourite Boca Junior's tie and also Independiente's defeat by the "opening" champion, Lanús. The favourite was River Plate, that in their stadium defeated Gimnasia of Jujuy 2-0 with goals scored by Matías Abelairas and Paulo Ferrari.

In Rosario, Boca could not beat Rosario Central who finally draw the score only 6 minutes to finish the match. Rodrigo Palacio opened the score and then the ex Argentinean player in World Cup 2002 Christian "Kily" González tied the match with a 40 mts shot.

Independiente had a very difficult game verus Lanus but they played so bad that the 1-0 ended a good score line. The last champions of Argentina defeated them with an own goal scored by the ex-Lanús player, Leandro Gioda.

Racing and Olimpo played an uneventful match that resulted in a 1-1 tie. First Javier Paez scored for the Bahía Blanca team but Facundo Sava tied for the local. Although San Lorenzo has incorporated many stars like Andrés D´Alessandro from Zaragoza and Gonzalo Bergessio from Benfica, they couldn´t avoid that Newell's Old Boys from Rosario won 2-0 with goals scored by defender Nicolás Spolli and forward Santiago Salcedo.

Vélez Sarsfield and Colón of Santa Fe played the match of the weekend. In the José Amalfitani stadium of Buenos Aires the locals won 4-3 with two goals by Gustavo Balvorín (currently the top scorer of the tournament), Santiago Silva and defender Mariano Uglessich. For the visitors Pablo Aguilar, Darío Gandín and Alejandro Capurro scored.

The other scores are the following: Arsenal 2 (Luciano Leguizamón and José Luis Calderón) – Huracán 0, Tigre 2 (Martín Morel and Guillermo Suárez) – Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata 1 (Ignacio Piatti), San Martín de San Juan 2 (Martín Bravo and Mario Pacheco) – Argentinos Juniors 0 and Estudiantes de La Plata 2 (Ezequiel Maggiolo y Pablo Piatti) – Banfield 1 (Darío Cvitanich).

Soccer returns to Argentina with some surprises and after the first matches River Plate sounds like the most serious candidate to rise up to the cup at the end of the season. But for that we must wait 18 more weekends that will hopefully be as amazing as this last one.

Contributed by: Leandro Compton Hall