Toluca, Marathon battle for Group B lead

September 15, 2009

It’s still early in the CONCACAF Champions League group stage, but a battle for Group B supremacy will take place at Nemesio Diaz as Toluca host Marathon on Thursday night.

Both teams have won their first two matches and are two of four teams among the final 16 to have secured the full six points from their first two matches.

Toluca comes into the match off a 1-0 victory against Indios in Ciudad Juarez in the Mexican Apertura on Saturday. Chilean Hector Mancilla scored the game’s lone goal, heading in Antonio Naelson’s cross two minutes before halftime.
Indios, which was reduced to 10 men in the 63rd minute when Juan Ramon Curbelo was sent off for a late challenge on Naelson, had an equalizer disallowed by the referee in the second half.

Toluca is eight points clear of San Luis in Apertura’s Group 1 and is atop the entire league with six wins in its first eight matches.

But Los Choriceros also received a bit of bad news Saturday when goalkeeper Hernan Cristante was replaced in the final quarter hour after suffering a dislocated patella in his left knee.

Marathon also sits atop the Honduran Apertura, two points clear of rival Olimpia after 10 rounds. Mitchell Brown struck for a pair to lift Marathon to a 2-0 win at Hispano on Saturday, stretching his team’s league unbeaten streak to four straight.

In what is essentially an elimination match, D.C. United travels to Trinidad & Tobago to take on San Juan Jabloteh in a meeting of winless teams in Group B at Hasley Crawford Stadium Tuesday night in Port-of-Spain.

D.C., which secured just one point in last year’s group stage, will be playing its third match in six days. On Wednesday, United defeated the Kansas City Wizards 1-0 with Luciano Emilio scoring his ninth goal of the year.

On Saturday,however , D.C. fell to the Seattle Sounders FC for the second time in 10 days at RFK Stadium with Colombian Fredy Montero striking the decisive goal six minutes from full time. Montero also scored the winning goal in a 1-0 victory in the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup final, a win that clinched the Sounders FC berth in next year’s CONCACAF Champions League.

It was D.C.’s first Major League Soccer home loss of the season.

Jabloteh is currently second in the Digicel Pro League, two points behind Joe Public. The two sides played to a goalless draw on Tuesday. Jabloteh bolstered its defense by adding Glenton Wolfe from W Connection, where he was used mostly for the Savonetta Boys reserves.

However, having been listed on W Connection’s roster as far back as the Preliminary Round, he is ineligible to play for Jabloteh in the Champions League this season.

“I want to be more active,” Wolfe told the Digicel Pro League website. “I wasn’t getting that at Connection.”

By Dylan Butler

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