Venezuela defeats Bolivia and qualifies in second position of Group A

The Venezuelan national team defeated Bolivia 3-1 on Saturday afternoon at the Mineirão Stadium in Belo Horizonte. This result guaranteed the Venezuelans second place in Group B of CONMEBOL Copa América, Brazil 2019.

With a goal from the dressing room (2′), Darwin Machí­s helped the «Vinotinto» to take the advantage after Ronald Hernández’s assistance.

Dudamel’s men had control of the ball and the game in much of the match, against a Bolivian team with almost no offensive vocation.

The second goal would come in the second half and again Machis (55′) would dress up as a goal scorer, this time after the assistance of Tomás Rincón, to establish the goal of tranquility for the Venezuelans.

Bolivia’s goal came over the end (82′) in a move that found Leonel Justiniano in front of goal, after Diego Bejarano’s assistance.

For the record, Josef Martinez scored Venezuela’s third at 86 minutes after a good cross from Soteldo to ensure Vinotinto’s second place.

Venezuela will expect their opponents to come out of Group B, the second of that key, to face them in the quarterfinals on Friday, March 28th, at the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro at 16:00.

Statistics

·         Venezuela won its eighth match in the history of CONMEBOL Copa América (65 PJ, 15E 42D), the smallest number for a CONMEBOL team in the tournament; however, seven of the eight wins were between 2007 and 2019.

·         Venezuela defeated Bolivia 3-1 and has two wins in five CONMEBOL Copa América (2E 1D) matches against La Verde.

·         Bolivia accumulated eight straight Copa América defeats, conceding 24 goals and scoring eight.

·         Bolivia did not win any of the last 18 Copa América matches in which they conceded the first goal of the match (2E 16D); the last time they were able to change the score was in the 1997 semi-finals, 3-1 against Mexico.

·         Venezuela survived the group stage in four of the last five editions of the Copa America; prior to this streak, they had never made it past the group stage (13 appearances).

·         With the victory over Bolivia 3-1, Venezuela reached 50 goals scored in the history of the CONMEBOL Copa America.

·         Darwin Machí­s scored the century’s fastest goal in CONMEBOL Copa América (1:15); he also became the fourth Venezuelan to score a double in the history of this tournament, and the first to do so since 1993: José Luis Dolgetta vs. United States (Carlos Maldonado in 1989 vs. Colombia; Antonio Ravelo in 1967 vs. Bolivia).

·         Rafael Dudamel is the first Venezuelan coach to achieve three Copa América victories: he defeated Bolivia 3-1 in this edition and had two victories in 2016 (1-0 vs Jamaica and 1-0 vs Uruguay).

·         Josef Martínez needed only 18 minutes on the field to score his first goal in the CONMEBOL Copa América 2019 (he had played 5 minutes against Brazil, and scored 13 minutes after entering against Bolivia).

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