Chivas 4-1 Barcelona

Local club Guadalajara Chivas only went and beat the best team in the world (minus their best player) the other night. Not sure Chivas would have put four past them if Shakira’s bloke hadn’t been subbed at half-time, but even so this must have been Barça’s heaviest defeat in years. It was one of the most entertaining friendlies I’ve ever watched, so I wrote up this little match report afterwards:

Chivas outclass European champions

Guadalajara Chivas carried their strong early-season form into the United States to record a shock 4-1 victory over Barcelona in Miami Wednesday night.

 Before 70,000 avid fans – a record crowd for a soccer match in Florida – a youthful Chivas side stunned the Catalan superstars with an emphatic victory in the World Football Challenge preseason tournament.

Spanish and European champions, Barcelona are widely considered the best club side in the world. Although they fielded a weakened team without Argentine sensation Lionel Messi, the starting line up was still replete with World Cup winners Xavi Hernandez, Gerard Pique and David Villa.

Chivas, whose policy is only to field Mexican players, fell behind to a Villa goal after just four minutes, but pulled off an inspired second-half comeback led by 22-year old striker Marco Fabian.

Mid-way through the second half Fabian fired in two spectacular goals in as many minutes, the second an acrobatic overhead kick. Ten minutes later 17-year old Giovani Casillas, who also scored in last month’s FIFA Under-17 World Cup final, netted the third, before Jose Luis Verduzco wrapped it up with a fourth goal in added time.

The result will go down as one of the finest in Chivas’ recent history and vindicates the club’s policy of investing only in young Mexican players.

Chivas will now be looking to continue their winning streak against Mexican champions Pumas de UNAM back in Guadalajara on Saturday.

The paper doesn’t tend to publish stuff like this in the print edition seeing as it’s mainly aimed at elderly American and Canadian expats who probably aren’t the core demographic for “soccer” updates (a little part of me dies every time I have to write this word instead of “football”). But anyway, they will always at least publish these pieces on the website, where normal people who like football will read them. The main audience being English-speaking Latinos who live in the U.S. and want to keep up with the happenings of Mexican football.

The highlights of the game are definitely worth watching — if just for the two Fabian goals — despite the annoying American commentating: