Since the start of the competition, the Peruvians had accustomed us to offering games and prolific matches. They continued on the same line this Friday by dismissing Paraguay on penalties after a completely crazy match (3-3 in regulation time). In the next round, Ricardo Gareca and his men will find Brazil, who beat Chile (1-0) a little later in the night and who had sharply beaten them at the opening of the tournament (4-0).
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To reach the last four, Peru took advantage of the very contrasting first half of opposing captain Gustavo Gomez. The Paraguayan defender opened the scoring quickly (11th) taking advantage of a scramble in the area before deceiving his own goalkeeper ten minutes later (20th). He then received two yellow cards in quick succession at the end of the first period when his team had just taken a goal (2-1).
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Paraguay pull off a penalty shootout
The teammates of Gianluca Lapadula, author of the third pawn of the game (40th), did not take advantage of their numerical superiority to take off. Worse, they conceded the equalizer after returning from the locker room on a goal from defender Junior Alonso, again on set piece.
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They then thought they had done the hard part by regaining the advantage ten minutes from time through Yoshimar Yotun whose shot from 25 meters was blocked by a defender before overtaking Antony Silva. It was without counting on the courageous team of Paraguay who took advantage of the exclusion of André Carrillo (85th) to equalize at the very end of the match (90th) on a shot full of opportunism from their striker Gabriel Avalos.
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The penalty shoot-out was marked by many failures: Santiago Ormeno and Christian Cueva on the Peruvian side; Héctor Martínez, Braian Samudio and Alberto Espinola on the Paraguayan side. The last will have been fatal.
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