Nacional parts ways with Jorge Bava after 2-0 loss to Racing in the Clausura

Two nil against Racing and that was it. As simple and as harsh as that. Nacional decided to cut its losses and ended Jorge Bava's spell as head coach of the first team, just hours after Saturday's defeat in matchday two of the Torneo Clausura.

The club's leadership didn't wait around for things to get worse. The loss to Racing was the final straw after months of mounting frustration, and the call was made quickly, with barely any room for debate.

Bava had taken over at Nacional back in March of this year, when the club parted ways with Jadson Viera following matchday seven of the Torneo Apertura. He arrived with the idea of steadying a team that had been rattled, but in the end the process produced results that were, at best, unremarkable.

The numbers back that up. Across his 25 games in charge of the Bolso, counting every competition, Bava posted 11 wins, three draws and 11 losses. A record split almost evenly between winning and losing, which simply isn't good enough for a club with Nacional's standards. The team scored 36 goals and conceded 38, another figure that points to a defense that never quite came together.

A forgettable Apertura and a Sudamericana that showed no mercy

In the Torneo Apertura, Nacional finished in seventh place, nine points behind champion Racing. Even there it was clear the gap to the top wasn't just a matter of a couple of stray results.

Then came the Torneo Intermedio, where the team couldn't even reach the decider for its group: it finished two points behind Wanderers, who went on to the Serie B final.

But if there's one chapter that really weighed on Bava's exit, it was the international stage. Nacional was eliminated in the group phase of the CONMEBOL Libertadores, finishing third in its group, which dropped it into the Sudamericana. There was no relief there either: the team fell in the first knockout round to Argentina's Tigre, with a defeat that stung in particular, a 0-3 loss at home. Losing that way at the Gran Parque Central, in front of the home crowd, isn't something fans forget easily.

On top of all that is the Tabla Anual, the season-long standings that carry as much weight in Uruguay as any short tournament. There, Peñarol opened up an eight point gap over Nacional, and did it while having played two more matches. In other words, the distance to the archrival, in terms of overall consistency, grew instead of shrinking.

With that combination of results (an Apertura finish far from the title, an Intermedio without qualification, a Libertadores and a Sudamericana that both ended early, and an uphill battle in the Anual) the patience of the club's board finally ran out. Nacional must now find a replacement who can restore the team's competitiveness before the Clausura moves too far along.