Newell's stuns Platense with Solari's strike to take all three points

Santiago Solari settled the match with a left-footed finish (well, actually his right foot, but a clean finish all the same) in the 17th minute, and that edge was enough for Newell's Old Boys to walk away with all three points from Vicente Lopez. Platense 0, Newell's Old Boys 1, and the home side was down to ten men by the end after Celias Ingenthron was sent off in the second half.

The goal capped a sequence that had been building. Five minutes earlier, Solari had tested Platense's goalkeeper with a shot from outside the box that was saved close to the near post. He kept probing, and this time there was no denying him: he received the ball in the middle of the box and drilled a right-footed shot into the center of the goal to make it 0-1. Newell's kept pushing through the first half. In the 35th minute, Matias Coccaro nearly doubled the lead with a header that grazed the right side of the crossbar off a Solari cross.

Platense responded as best it could. Before the goal, the home side had threatened with a long-range effort from Nicolas Retamar that flew well over the bar, and in the second half it looked to work the flanks, finishing with six corners to Newell's lone corner all match. But it lacked punch in the final third: Franco Zapiola fired twice from outside the area without seriously testing the goalkeeper, and Gonzalo Lencina, deep into stoppage time, couldn't beat the visiting keeper with a shot from the middle of the box.

Things got even tougher for the home side in the 81st minute, when Celias Ingenthron was shown a straight red card for fighting. Down a man, Platense found it even harder to claw back the result in the time that remained, which stretched further with five minutes of second-half stoppage time added for substitutions and stoppages late in the match.

What the numbers say

Possession favored the home side, which controlled the ball and completed more passes, but Newell's was more efficient where it counts, generating more shots and more shots on target.

The xG calculated after the fact from the match's shots backs up that reading too: 0.85 for Newell's compared with 0.49 for Platense, a gap that confirms the visitors were the team that created more and better chances, even if the home side held more of the ball.

The result also flipped the script on what had been projected before kickoff: the pre-match odds gave Platense a 39% chance of winning, 33% for a draw and just 28% for a Newell's win, with expected goals of 1.16 for the home side and 0.93 for Newell's. None of that held up: the underdog on paper came away with the win, in a tight scoreline that didn't even reach the 2.09 total goals that had been projected.

What it means in the standings

In Group A's table, Newell's Old Boys climbed to 16 points, sitting seventh with a record of four wins, four draws and two losses so far this tournament. Platense, meanwhile, stayed at 9 points in 13th place, with two wins, three draws and five losses. The gap between the two sides in the standings now stands at 7 points, a margin that today's result only reinforced.