tigers Y Atlas open the curtain on the semi-finals of the tournament Closure 2022 of Liga MX with a wide margin of difference beyond the points they obtained in the regular phase, but based on the experience that each one has in the last 10 leagues.
Regarding the general table, tigers He finished in second place in the tournament with 33 points, six more than Atlas, located in the third step. Both were among the most consistent in performance during the 17 days (they did not leave the top six since day 4), but their difference towards the end of the Closure 2022 it becomes more noticeable in his history of final phases.
While tigers has qualified nine of the last 10 leagues, counting from Clausura 2017, Atlas He has only classified five, but only three of them consecutively between 2021 and 2022, since he had a period of absences between 2018 and 2020 in which he was even involved in issues of relegation and payment of fines for his poor percentage position.
For example, in the summer of 2021, while tigers closed a successful cycle of 10 years in which he won 10 titles with Ricardo Ferretti, Atlas He was condemned to pay 70 million pesos to Liga MX for having finished with the second worst ratio of the 2020-21 season, only above Atlético de San Luis.
The landscape of tigers with Ferretti and now with Miguel Herrera it has been successful. Among these last 10 leagues, the felines hold two titles (Apertura 2017 and Clausura 2019), a runner-up (Clausura 2017), two semifinals (Apertura 2021 and Clausura 2022), four quarterfinals (Clausura and Apertura 2018, Apertura 2019 and Guardians 2020) and only once did they stay out of the quarterfinals, which was during the 2021 Guardians playoff, when they lost precisely against Atlas.
For their part, the rojinegros qualified for the two leagues of 2017 and returned to the two leagues of 2021 and the most recent in the Closure 2022. In the 2017 they were eliminated in the quarterfinals, in the Guardianes 2021 they managed to climb to the semifinals but their boom was in the Apertura 2021, where they achieved the title that keeps them as current champions and after a drought of 70 years.
“In theory I can say many things, but you have to put them into practice. Logically when you live these experiences, like last year (when they were champions), you already know what you are going to find, you already take it naturally. It’s what we want, for this club to get used to playing in leagues, to compete, to be at the top. If you’re there, at some point the championship is going to come. So the objective is that, to be as high as possible”, Diego Cocca, coach of the Atlas, came to define, prior to his participation in the final phase of Clausura 2022, in which they avoided the playoffs for having finished in the first four.
The balance between Diego Cocca and his colleague from the tigers, Miguel Herrera, is also contrasting. To begin with, Herrera began directing 20 years ago, in February 2002, and since then he has gone through seven teams plus the national team, which he even managed in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. On the contrary, Cocca began his career as First Division coach in December 2009 in his native Argentina and in Mexico he only had experience of two tournaments between Santos Laguna Y Xolos from Tijuana before arriving at Atlas in the Guardians 2020.
“We have been constantly in these instances of the league, which has become a guarantee with my teams, that is why we are attractive to our rivals (…) Putting history and numbers together, I have been constant in these instances, and these players are also used to to the league and to win. We are a team that knows how to play these instances”, said Miguel Herrera in a conference during the final phase of the Apertura 2021, where he lived his first semifinals in charge of tigers.
In total, Herrera has reached at least the semifinals in 15 of the 34 tournaments he has led in the First Division of Mexican soccer, highlighting a streak between Clausura 2012 and Apertura 2019, where he reached four finals and six semifinals, that is, finished in the Top 4 of the MX League in 10 different tournaments, which is why he says he is used to meeting the challenges of this stage.
On the contrary, Diego Cocca finished out of the league with Santos in the Clausura 2011 even being the worst rookie coach of said institution with six consecutive losses, but he corrected his reputation with a semi-final in the Clausura 2018 from the bench of Xolos.
By the second half of 2018, his performance was no longer enough and he was dismissed from Tijuanareturning to his native Argentina to direct Rosario Central even during the 2019 Copa Libertadores. His return to Mexican soccer took place until the summer of 2020 with Atlas, where he had been a player between 1999 and 2001, but in his first tournament as a red and black coach It cost him adaptation.
Now with the label of champion, the one that Miguel Herrera has held twice, Cocca does not lose concentration and assures that his team does not either: “I don’t believe in championship status. It must have happened to someone, I don’t know, I speak for myself and my players. We are all concentrated, involved in all the growth that we can still have, at a football level, at a club level, at a structural level. We’re working on that,” he said earlier in the day. Closure 2022.
During this semester, Miguel Herrera had an effectiveness of 64.7% of points, while Diego Cocca’s was 52.9%, which was enough for them to enter as Top 2 and Top 3 to the quarterfinals directly. His experience on the bench will be a factor to take into account for the series, which begins at the Jalisco stadium on Wednesday night and closes at El Volcán de San Nicolás de los Garza on Saturday.
Another notable difference between tigers Y Atlas is its position in the table of template values, published by the specialized portal Transfermarkt. According to this source, tigers It has a value of 76.3 million dollars, being the second most expensive squad in Liga MX, while Atlas is worth 45.3 million, occupying ninth place.
In an individual matter, the most expensive footballer in tigers is the French midfielder Florian Thauvin, with a price of 12.6 million dollars, while the most valuable of Atlas is the Colombian striker Julián Quiñones, who is worth less than half (5.28 million).
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