Rondon's lightning double rescues Pachuca in 3-3 draw with Necaxa

Salomon Rondon popped up twice in four minutes to produce the most dramatic draw of the Liga MX weekend, as Pachuca and Necaxa finished 3-3 at Estadio Hidalgo, in a match the visitors had all but wrapped up until the closing stretch.

Necaxa took control early. In the 14th minute, Matias Espindola finished with his left foot from point-blank range to make it 0-1, and before the half hour mark, Julian Carranza doubled the lead on a counterattack set up by Espindola himself, making it 0-2 in the 40th minute. In between, the referee reviewed a possible penalty for Pachuca in the 36th minute that VAR ended up waving off. Benjamin Mora's side went into the break down, but pulled one back right before halftime: Eduardo Bauermann headed home in the 52nd minute to make it 1-2, finishing off a cross from Oussama Idrissi following a foul.

The second half appeared to be settled when Juan Valencia, who had come on for Carranza, converted a penalty in the 78th minute (committed by Francisco Venegas with a handball inside the box) to make it 1-3. At that point Necaxa, sitting 17th in the table, had the match in hand. But Pachuca refused to go down: Rondon headed one in during the 83rd minute off a Rodolfo Pizarro assist to make it 2-3, and three minutes later, in the 86th minute, he struck again with a right-footed finish, once more set up by Pizarro, to seal the final 3-3.

What the numbers say

Pachuca dominated possession and the ball, but Necaxa was more efficient at the key moments of the match.

Our own xG estimate, calculated after the match from the shots taken, backs up what played out on the field: Necaxa generated 3.04 expected goals against 1.48 for Pachuca, a gap that explains why the visitors came so close to taking all three points despite seeing less of the ball.

The result also runs counter to what we projected before kickoff: our preview gave Pachuca a 57% chance of winning, against just 18% for Necaxa and 25% for a draw, with expected goals of 1.87 for the home side and 0.98 for the visitors. On the field, almost the opposite happened: Necaxa created more and took the lead more often, and only Rondon's late surge kept the upset from being complete.

What it means in the standings

So far this tournament, Pachuca has 13 points from 11 matches played, with 3 wins, 4 draws and 4 losses, sitting in 12th place. Necaxa, for its part, has 9 points from 11 outings (2 wins, 3 draws and 6 losses) and sits 17th, with a gap of just 4 points between the two clubs in the standings.

The match produced yellow cards for Emilio Rodriguez, Matias Espindola, Luis Jimenez, Francisco Venegas, Nicolas Vallejo, Juan Valencia and Eduardo Bauermann, a reflection of how intensely the final minutes were contested. For Pachuca, Rondon's double in just three minutes was what prevented a defeat that had seemed all but certain; for Necaxa, the lingering feeling was of having let a two-goal lead slip away in the match's final fifteen minutes.