by Rod Hughes

A La Nación healine writer called it the “eternal final.” And how often has the national soccer championship final been between these two clubs? It seems to average out that every other year they meet and settle accounts. So, on to another “classic” final. Here is how they got there:

Brujas 2, Saprissa 1

Brujas head coach Mauricio Wright saved some honor after a disastrous first semi-final match in which Brujas was swamped 5-0. Wright did some creative twiddling with the fiorward alignments to confuse the big purple “S” and it worked. If they had played in Asserrí as they did during the first half of this match they might have pulled off an upset. The play had scarcely opened when Saprissa’s Michael Barrantes fouled striker Daniel Jimenez. Osman López sank the penalty shot. The clock read exactly one minute. Brujas came back again 17 minutes later with Kraesher Mooke passing to Saul Phillip for the 2-0 and that is how the half ended.

If a Hollywood screenwriter, who did not know how hard it is to score in soccer against a first class club, would have written it, Brujas would have made three more in the second half, tied Saprissa in overall goals for the series and would have won it on a penalty shootout. But Mr. Reality stretched, scratched his beer belly, and decreed that Saprissa held the desperate Brujas attack and then, at the very end when all was lost for Brujas anyway, Saprissa’s Ronald Gómez sank a goal on an assist by César Elizondo. A bitter pill.

Parks Parks 4 as Alajuela Beats P-Z

At the end of the first half Wednesday, it appeared that a Saprissa-style stampede was in the works. The scoreboard at Morera Soto Stadium read 5-1. But Perez Zeledon, the warriors from the southern zone, do not got softly into that goodnight. They scored twice more while finally finding the plug to stop up their goal mouth against Alajuela’s Winston Parks. Too late. (Mr. Reality attended THAT match, too. Although he seems to have overlooked Parks. NOBODY makes four goals in the 79 minutes he was on the pitch. But he did!)

Doom, thy name is Winston Parks! He scored in less than a minute of play on a pass by Victor Nuñez, again at minute 11 on a pass by Harold Wallace then Wallace had his turn to score on a pass from Eliseo Quintanilla, before P-Z’s Diego País took a pass from Luis Steward Pérez to put them on the board, 3-1. And then Parks was back at it again on a pass by Quintanilla. Then Parks did it again on a pass by Carlos Castro. His number four made it 5-1. P-Z’s Keylor Quesada fought back valiantly with a goal as did País with his second goal but Parks had already sunk P-Z’s boat.