Cruz Azul holds on until the 99th minute to beat León 2-1 at the Banorte

Cruz Azul beat León 2-1 at Estadio Banorte, but the match got a lot more complicated than the final score suggests. With the clock already at minute 99, the referee still had to point to the spot for the visitors, who came agonizingly close to leveling a game that, up to that point, had looked all but settled.

The first half was end to end without goals, with Gabriel Fernández testing the keeper from outside the box early on and Jesús Orozco heading narrowly over the crossbar in the 34th minute, but neither side could find a breakthrough before the break. León came out of the locker room with a response, as Edgar Guerra forced a save out of Kevin Mier from point-blank range, and Juan Guevara tried his luck with a header off a corner kick. The match stayed even until, in the 52nd minute, Rodrigo Echeverría brought down Carlos Rodríguez inside the box and the referee pointed to the spot for Cruz Azul.

Andrés Montaño made no mistake from twelve yards: in the 55th minute he made it 1-0 with a low shot to his left, just inside the post. The goal gave Cruz Azul some breathing room, and the home side doubled its lead shortly after a round of substitutions. José Paradela, who had come on for Andrés Montaño, struck in the 71st minute to make it 2-0 with a left-footed shot from outside the box that found the top corner, set up by a headed assist from Nicolás Ibáñez, another recent substitute.

With that scoreline, the match looked all but decided, but León refused to give up and pushed until the very end. Stoppage time stretched to eight minutes, and with barely any game left, VAR reviewed a play inside Cruz Azul's box: Amaury García had brought down Alfonso Alvarado, and the referee overturned his initial call to award a penalty to León in the 96th minute. Alvarado, the very player who had been fouled, stepped up to take it, and in the 99th minute he made it 2-1 with a low shot to his right, just inside the post. There was no time left for anything else.

What the numbers say

The stats reflect just how even the match was beyond the final score. León had a bit more possession and a slight edge in shots and corners, but Cruz Azul was more clinical when it mattered most.

The xG calculated after the fact based on the match's shots comes out nearly even, with 2.09 for Cruz Azul and 2.162 for León, a number that confirms León created enough danger to have taken something more from the game, even though it was Cruz Azul who converted its chances in the decisive moments.

Beforehand, our projection gave Cruz Azul a 58% chance of winning, compared to 18% for León and 24% for a draw, with expected goals of 2.04 for the home side and 1.07 for the visitors. The final result, 2-1, ended up fairly in line with that favoritism, though the penalty scare in stoppage time gave the match a drama those numbers did not anticipate.

What it means for the table

With this result, Cruz Azul stays in third place in Liga MX with 29 points from 15 matches played, the product of 9 wins, 2 draws and 4 losses. León, for its part, remains in seventh with 22 points, after 6 wins, 4 draws and 5 losses in the same number of matches. The gap between the two sides in the standings is 7 points, a margin this match did not change despite how tight it turned out to be.

In the end, Cruz Azul takes the three points, but the finish, with Alvarado's penalty, leaves the sense that León had a case for taking more from a match that, statistically and on the field, was far more even than the final score suggests.