Pumas UNAM steals win from Puebla with 90th-minute Angulo goal

Alvaro Angulo's header in the 90th minute, off a corner kick, snatched away a point Puebla had nearly locked up. Pumas UNAM left Estadio Cuauhtemoc with a 1-2 win decided on the final play of the match in Liga MX.

The script seemed to repeat itself: Pumas goes ahead, Puebla equalizes, and the match stays open until the end. That's exactly what happened. Juninho made it 0-1 in just the 9th minute, finishing from close range with his right foot after a cross into the box from Rodrigo Lopez. Thirteen minutes later, in the 22nd minute, Omar Moreno leveled it for Puebla with a right-footed shot from the center of the box, assisted by Luifer Hernandez. The 1-1 scoreline held through halftime and for most of the second half.

In between came a moment that could have changed everything: in the 58th minute, VAR reviewed a challenge by Adalberto Carrasquilla and decided not to show a red card. Two minutes later, the Panamanian did pick up a yellow for dangerous play, but Pumas UNAM finished the match with all eleven players on the field, no small detail in such a tight finish.

The tie held until the final minute of regulation. That's when Angulo, who had come on as a substitute, struck, heading home from close range to make it a definitive 1-2 off a corner. A direct blow to a Puebla side that had held the result for nearly the entire second half.

What the numbers say

Puebla had more possession and more total shots, but Pumas UNAM was sharper where it counts most: in clear-cut chances.

That gap of four big chances to one is also reflected in the post-match xG calculated from the game's shots: 1.503 for Puebla versus 3.167 for Pumas UNAM. It's a measure of what each team generated over the 90 minutes, not a prediction, but it makes clear the visitors were sharper in the moments that mattered, even with less of the ball and fewer total shots.

The result also departs from our pre-match projections. Beforehand, we gave Pumas UNAM a 47% chance of winning, 27% to a draw and 26% to a Puebla victory, with expected goals of 1.16 for the home side and 1.65 for the visitors. The final scoreline, a 1-2 away win, ended up matching the favorite tagged by that projection, even though the match wasn't decided until the final minute.

What the match means in the standings

Neither side arrives in great form in the table. Puebla stays at 16 points after 15 matches played, with four wins, four draws and seven losses, sitting in 14th place. Pumas UNAM, for its part, has 20 points from 15 matches (five wins, five draws and five losses) and sits in 9th, just four points above their opponent on the day.

For Puebla, the blow stings twice over: they held the draw for nearly the whole second half and lost it on the match's final play. For Pumas UNAM, the result confirms what the big-chances numbers showed: with less possession and fewer shots, they knew how to be more clinical when the match demanded it, and they take the three points from Estadio Cuauhtemoc.