The final of the Liga Mayor in El Salvador is set to kick off in just a few days, at 4:00 Eastern on Sunday night. The title game is a fantastic closing event to the year in Central American soccer, with most of the other leagues having finished their seasons already. It's a great showcase of how bigtime the game can get even in a tiny country like El Salvador; the final regularly fills up the 53,000 capacity Estadio Cuscatlán.
In this winter's contest you've got two of the giants of Salvadoran football: Alianza, the defending runner-ups, are competing in their seventh consecutive final. A tremendous run, but thus far they've got only 2 titles to show for it. Alianza made a deep run in the Concacaf League this season as well, knocking off San Francisco, Tauro, and San Carlos en route to the semifinals.
FAS on the other hand have not had the same recent successes as their opponents; this will be their first final since the 2015 Apertura, and the club have not raised the trophy since the 2009 Apertura. That's an incredibly long drought for the winningest team in the country (17 titles) and debatably the most popular.
For the neutrals, this is the match everyone wanted. Alianza had a fantastic season, earning the #1 seed with an impressive 48 points. FAS were a distant second with 37. Both received byes to the semifinals, where FAS advanced only on away goals while Alianza earned a comfortable 4-1 series win. Alianza may be a clear favorite, but the beauty of a one-off final like this is you can't count out anyone, let alone the 2nd best team in the country.
Alianza, the juggernauts of the season, produced the league's top offense (38 goals) and stingiest defense (18 against), led up front by Raul Peñaranda with 13 goals. The Colombian also had 4 goals in the Concacaf League. FAS have a Colombian forward of their own though; Brayan Gil Hurtado finished the season with 15 goals to his name. FAS as a team actually equaled Alianza's mark of 38 goals, but they conceded 7 more than their rivals.
This game has all the makings of a classic. The atmosphere is always electric. You've got #1 vs #2. Both teams and fanbases are hungry to perform in a final after so many recent failures. As always you may need to find a stream through...unconventional means, or go find a local restaurant that's showing the game, but isn't that sort of part of the fun?
Enjoy the game, and happy holidays to you all! Hopefully some cool stuff coming in 2020.
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