NEWS

CONCACAF champions Pachuca of Mexico rallied from 2-0 down to beat African champs Al Ahly of Egypt 4-2 after extra time in the FIFA Club World Cup Japan 2008 presented by Toyota on Saturday night.

Playing at Tokyo’s National Stadium, Pachuca were keen to erase the memory of last year’s 1-0 defeat at the hands of another African club, Tunisia’s Etoile Sahel, but their dream turned into a nightmare when they found themselves 2-0 down at halftime.
The first goal was sheer bad luck after Mohamed Aboutrika’s low cross into the box in the 28th minute struck Pachuca’s Fausto Pinto and ended up in the net.
However, Al Ahly’s second was a classy team goal scored moments before halftime. Aboutrika skillfully controlled a long ball out of defense and slipped the ball down the right to teammate Mohamed Barakat. With the Pachuca defense stretched, Barakat’s low ball across the box found Flavio with time and space, and he fired the ball into the roof of the net.
Pachuca coach Enrique Meza replaced Pinto and Jaime Correa with Luis Montes and Juan Carlos Rojas at the break, and suddenly the Mexican team were up and running.
With less than two minutes gone in the second half, Pachuca reduced the deficit to one goal. After Ahmed El Sayed brought down Paul Aguilar, Montes saw his free-kick go straight through the Al Ahly defense and into the far corner.
Al Ahly were made to pay the same price when Shady Mohamed brought down Christian Gimenez in the 73rd minute. The Mexican striker took the free-kick himself and steered the ball into the left-hand corner of the net to bring the scores level at 2-2 and take the game into extra time.
Pachuca continued to pressure Al Ahly and in the seventh minute of extra time they made a quick counterattack. They got the rub of the ball with a couple of lucky breaks and Damian Alvarez was on hand to finish off the move emphatically and put Pachuca in sight of the semifinals.
The game was effectively over when Gimenez got his second with a ripping left-foot shot that put Pachuca 4-2 up.
"We panicked," Ahly's Portuguese coach Manuel Jose admitted. "Clearly the players couldn't handle the pressure.”
Meza thought his team deserved to win.
"We were unfortunate to be down 2-0 because I thought we played better than Al Ahly in the first half,'' Pachuca’s manager commented.
"We had to think about how to achieve our goal and that was to play creatively. We scored two minutes into the second half and played more creatively and that's why we won.''
In the semifinals, Pachuca will meet South American champions Liga de Quito of Ecuador on Wednesday at Tokyo’s National Stadium.