Tolima Heads to Ecuador Needing a Comeback Against Unbeaten Independiente del Valle

A post. That is the image every "Pijao" fan will take away from the first leg. Junior Hernandez rattled a shot off the crossbar (or the post, depending on who you ask) on a night when Tolima created chance after chance but walked away empty handed. The final score at Manuel Murillo Toro stadium in Ibague was 0-1 in favor of Independiente del Valle, with an early goal from Aron Rodriguez in the 11th minute. Now Tolima must go looking for the comeback on Ecuadorian soil, and there is no room for anything less.

The round of 16 series in the Copa Libertadores will be decided on Tuesday, August 25, at 7:30 p.m., at Banco Guayaquil stadium. Tolima arrives needing to score and, if it wants to avoid any late scares on the aggregate scoreline, needing to keep a clean sheet too. Nothing new for a team that already knows what it means to play for everything on the road in continental competition.

The opponent is no pushover. Independiente del Valle comes in as the unbeaten leader of Ecuador's LigaPro and finished first in its group during the Libertadores' preliminary stage. In other words, this is a team doing things right on every front, and one that also gets to play at home with the aggregate score in its favor. For Tolima, pulling off the upset in Ecuador would mean much more than just advancing to the next round: it would mean ending the unbeaten run of a rival that so far has shown no cracks.

Oliveros' Squad List for the Bid to Pull Off the Feat

Head coach Sebastian Oliveros has already named his 22-player squad for the match, and the core is, naturally, the group that started the first leg. The idea seems clear: stick with the setup that created scoring chances and trust that a substitute or two off the bench can make a difference if the score gets tight and the team needs fresh legs to push forward.

In goal will be Neto Volpi and Miguel Ortega. The back line is made up of Anderson Angulo, Jan Angulo, Daniel Pedrozo, Jherson Mosquera, Yordan Osorio and Junior Hernandez himself, who will surely be looking for redemption after that shot that came back off the woodwork. In midfield there are names like Cristian Arrieta, Ever Valencia, Luis Sanchez, Homer Martinez, Victor Reyes, Kelvin Florez, Sebastian Guzman and Shean Barbosa. Up top, the job of finding the net falls to Jader Valencia, Sergio Aguayo, Adrian Parra, Edwar Lopez and Jorge Hurtado.

The task is far from simple: overturning a 0-1 road deficit against an unbeaten league leader demands the kind of finishing that Tolima lacked in the first chapter despite all the chances it created. But that is the thing about soccer: sometimes all it takes is for the ball to go in once where it used to hit the post, and the whole story changes. The "Pijao" has the obligation and, based on what it showed in Ibague, also the tools to try to make it happen.