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Bravo heroics lead Chile to penalty kick win over Portugal

Photo by Brad Penner/USA Today Sports

Claudio Bravo kept Portugal from scoring for 120 minutes, but the Chilean goalkeeper saved his best efforts for penalty kicks to lead his country to the Confederations Cup final.

While his teammates fired home their initial three spot kicks, Bravo made three straight saves to lead Chile to a 3-0 win in penalty kicks following a 0-0 draw through 120 minutes. The win sends the South American champions through to the Confederations Cup final.

After Arturo Vidal smashed home the opening penalty kick, Claudio Bravo gave Chile the advantage by stopping Ricardo Quaresma’s shot for Portugal. Aranguiz made his penalty kick and Bravo stopped  another, pushing away Joao Moutinho’s shot. After an Alexis Sanchez make, Nani’s shot was also stopped by Bravo, giving Chile the 3-0 win in penalty kicks.

The opening 90 minutes were largely tilted towards Chile, who claimed a bulk of the possession, but not a bulk of the chances. One of the game’s best looks came for Portugal just seven minutes in as Cristiano Ronaldo picked out Bernardo Silva on the back post only to see Claudio Bravo make a sliding save in front of goal.

Aranguiz scuffed a pair of chances in the minutes that followed before the second half saw the game open up significantly. Just 10 minutes into the second half, Eduardo Vargas saw his spectacular bicycle attempt parried away by Rui Patricio while Vidal rifled a shot over the crossbar just a few minutes later. Ronaldo also saw a shot just miss before putting another shot wide of the post with extra time looming.

At the start of extra time, Alexis Sanchez saw a header graze the post before Portugal took control for an extended period. The reigning European champions were lucky not to give away a penalty kick for a foul on Jose Fonte, but the referee ruled to play on and VAR was not used.

With just seconds remaining Chile smashed the post twice. Vidal’s initial long distance smash rocketed off the post and fell to Martin Rodriguez, whose tap bounced off the crossbar and out.

The match then went to penalty kicks, where Bravo booked Chile’s date with the winner of Mexico and Germany’s Thursday clash.

Comments

  1. The Germany Mexico game today is on FX2. I have Comcast and they don’t carry FX2. I can’t even watch it online because they dropped it from FOX Sports GO. What the hell am I supposed to do to watch this game.
    And if this is what’s going to happen in the world cup next year, I will be dropping Comcast after 22 years. This is total horse crap.
    Any thoughts?

    Reply
  2. Sorry…I’m actually rooting for Mexico against Germany. I hate them. They hate us. But they are ours to hate, and ours to beat. And I am always a big fan of overrated Euro teams crashing and burning, especially since UEFA is now going to such lengths to make sure we can’t even get friendlies against their national teams, and forcing us to accept diluted World Cup bids we have to share with Mexico and Canada while apparently in their eyes even Qatar is worthy to host a full cup on their lonesome.

    The more damage CONCACAF teams do to Euro squads, the less Euro-centric the game gets. I was rooting hard for Chile against anti-football, stodgy, defensive-minded, boring-as-sin Portugal who pretty much have 10 guys behind the ball and then Ronaldo, and I’d love to see Mexico shock Germany. Chile will sort Mexico out in the finals anyhow but I’d very much like the Europeans to be reminded the soccer world does not revolve around them.

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    • I too was rooting for Chile over Portugal, Ronaldo waiting to win it in PKs never even got to step up, pretty funny. As for concacaf, I’ll never root for Mexico to win anything. They’re our one and only rival, they’re dirty, they’re cheap, they’re sore losers. If they can beat Germany, credit to them but not for one second will I ever root for them. No true Nat ever would.

      Reply

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