The third men’s match of the 2011 Pan Am Challenge was between Paraguay and Uruguay. Both Uruguay and Paraguay women’s teams were in the stands cheering loudly throughout the match. The match started with both teams fighting intensely for possession. Uruguay, however, earned the first penalty corner of the game. And Mauro PERI sent in a hard strike to make the score 1-0 for Uruguay. About five minutes later, Uruguay’s Matias PEREIRO made it 2-0. Nonetheless, Paraguay did not let up and continued to penetrate their attacking circle. Continuing their attacking pace, Uruguay’s Mateo PEREIRO made it 3-0 off a strike from the far left side of the circle. And then Sabastian CASTILLO made the score 4-0 in favor of Uruguay. Eventually, Paraguay’s defense could not seem to keep Uruguay from their relentless attack. Uruguay was able to pull defenders (and Paraguay’s keeper Paolo BELLO CANETE) well out of position for two quick goals right before the end of the first half.

Despite being down six goals, Paraguay came out strong in the second half. It was almost ten minutes before Uruguay’s Federico INGLESIAS scored back-to-back field goals to make it an eight goal lead. Paraguay, however, received some penalty corners late in the half and had a few good scoring opportunities, but could not convert.  Soon after, Uruguay’s Maximiliano TIXE shot a beautiful drag flick off a penalty corner to make the score 9-0. Uruguay persisted until the end and Captain Patricio DRAPER scored a goal to make the final score 10-0 against Paraguay.

MATCH QUOTES

Paraguay’s Coach Martha GEHRMANN

On the match…

I thought it was a bad match. Uruguay was the better team today. We have a lot to improve on. We will meet. And with each game hopefully we will get a little better and turnaround and produce results.

Paraguay’s Pablo ZAMBRINI VERA

On the match…

I agree, it was a bad match. But we played from goal to goal and the whole game. Uruguay had more power, better movement on the pitch, were smarter and have more resources than us.

On improving during the rest of the tournament…

We need to play more hockey and move the ball better and continue to become accustomed to the turf and that will help us open up space on the field.

On the hockey playing conditions in Paraguay…

In Paraguay, we play 7 versus 7 and our pitch is one-quarter the size of this pitch. It is also sand-based. You cannot compare hockey played in these conditions to hockey played here. So here we are learning and getting used to playing “true” hockey.

Uruguay’s Coach Marcelo TABORDA

On the match…

In our first match, we were a little off. Today, our nerves were much less and we were more comfortable playing our game. We played together as a team today rather than individuals like last game. We attacked collectively and had more control. However, we still made little errors in our defensive end that Paraguay capitalized off of and earned penalty corners from. These are things that we need to correct and improve on for the future.

On if he tried to change anything at half-time…

Having an early lead, I could make small changes without too many risks. I wanted to rotate everyone so that everyone could play. We are working incrementally to improve for the final.

Uruguay’s Patricio DRAPER

On the match…

We had adopted better to the pitch. We are always improving and we put into the match what we had practiced. We need to correct the short corners we give up on the defensive end.

On the difference between this match and Uruguay’s first match against Brazil…

Nerves; a new pitch; we also corrected small mistakes we made in that game and played more together. It was really great to see at least five different players score goals today. We are always improving.