CONCACAF League Week 2 Wrap-Up

The preliminary round has come to a close and the field has been narrowed to 16 teams. Everyone is just four series wins away from a title and potentially only one win away from the Champions League. The round of 16 may be early goings but these will be some seriously important matches.

During Jornada 2 we saw the conclusion of the series from last week, complete with some real surprises and impressive performances. Here's the quick review:

Santa Tecla 1-0 Real Estelí (2-2 aggregate)

Santa Tecla took an early lead into a massive thunderstorm and power outage delay, and held on to advance on away goals. Last week's MVP Juan Barrera sat out with the flu, and his absence was visible for Estelí.

AS Capoise 1-1 Robinhood (1-1 aggregate)

Capoise dominated the start of the match and took a deserved lead on an unfortunate own-goal in the 21st minute. The momentum shifted in the second half and Robinhood snatched the winning away goal in the 79th minute thanks to Cirilo Da Costa's header.

Saprissa 3-1 Belmopan Bandits (6-2 aggregate)

This series was already finished when Saprissa took a 3-1 lead in Belize last week, but the Bandits played well. They played even better in the Monster's Cave, even taking a 1-0 lead into halftime to put the whole region on upset alert. Needing just one more goal to steal a legendary series win, they were burned a few times in the second half to make the aggregate score a completely inaccurate picture of how competitive this series was.

San Francisco 0-1 Alianza (1-6 aggregate)

Alianza demolished San Francisco so bad in the first leg that the energy was a little low for this one. Alianza snatched the away win for style points and look quite dangerous heading into the next round.

Antigua GFC 0-0 Forge FC (1-2 aggregate)

A thrilling series ends with Canada's first ever representative living to fight another day. After conceding the away goal last week it looked like a tall order to escape from Guatemala alive, but Forge pulled it off despite some scares. A fantastic result for their first foray into Central America.

Marathón 1-1 Comunicaciones (Aggregate 2-3)

With only a few minutes left to play in a flooded affair it looked like Guatemalan football was in for a sour night when Yustin Arboleda banged one in for Marathón, but a dramatic late winner in extra time from Christian Hernandez on what seemed to be a failed cross sent Los Cremas through to the next round. This is the pure chaos we're all here to see.

 Player of the Week: Kyle Bekker

Bekker was in charge of the midfield for Forge all night, making some key steals and helping control the pace to prevent Antigua from overwhelming them.


Goal of the Week: Yustin Arboleda

Arboleda's impressive juggling act should have been a fantastic winner that would go down in club lore, but after the loss it may be forgotten.