Shedding a Little Light on the Triangular

By: Jeremy | December 15th, 2008

All right. I’ve done some digging, and a lot of reading and this is what I have come up with thus far. The matches will be played on neutral pitches, and there are no home teams, but I don’t know how the tickets will be sold. I believe each team will get an equal allotment, but I don’t know if any will be sold apart from that.

Wednesday night, at 6:30, San Lorenzo squares off with Tigre, on the pitch of Velez-Sarsfield. The ref will be Saul Laverni.

Satuday night at 6:30, San Lorenzo takes on Boca Juniors, this time in the stadium of Racing. Hector Baldassi will have the honor of officiating the match.

Tuesday night at 8:45 Tigre and Boca Juniors face off in the last match, again at the home of Racing. Sergio Pezzatta will be manning the whistle.

The rules as I understand them. There will be an outright winner, regardless of the results. Lets run down the scenarios a bit.

1. One team wins both of its matches. That team is the champion with 6 points. If it is San Lorenzo, I don’t know if the last match would even be played, as it would have no bearing on anything.

2. Two matches end in a draw and one match ends with a victor. The victor wins the championship. Example. San Lorenzo draws Tigre; Boca loses to San Lorenzo; and Boca draws Tigre. San Lorenzo wins the championship with 4 points.

3. Each match ends with a different winner. We go to tiebreakers between all three teams as all three teams would sit on 3 points.

4. Two matches end with different winners and one match ends in a draw. The two winners go to tiebreakers providing that the drawn match was the match between the two winners, otherwise the team that won and drew are champions.
Example #1 (winners draw): Tigre beats San Lorenzo; Boca beats San Lorenzo; Tigre draw Boca. Tiebreakers result as Tigre and Boca are level on 4 points.
Example #2 (winners don’t draw): San Lorenzo beats Tigre; Boca beats San Lorenzo; Boca draw Tigre. Boca wins with 4 points.

5. All three matches end in draws. All three teams go to tiebreakers on 2 points.

The tiebreakers are, in order:
Goal Differential in the Triangular.
Goals Scored in the Triangular.
Head-to-Head record in the Apertura.

Making it to Head-to-Head favors Tigre, who beat both Boca and San Lorenzo, followed by Boca, who beat San Lorenzo. Basically if it comes down to this, San Lorenzo is screwed.

How Boca got a leg up: Ole is reporting that the first match actually (possibly) came up with Boca – they drew balls down at the AFA HQ (in secret). Somehow that got switched to Tigre or San Lorenzo. So now Boca gets six days to rest up and heal a few nicks.

Then on Tuesday, in the final match – barring a San Lorenzo sweep – Boca will face a Tigre team that could already be eliminated. Of course that will mean that San Lorenzo has three points already, and all Boca will need is a draw to win the championship. See example #2 under scenario 4 above.

So there you have it. The official Argentina Offside guide to the unprecedented Triangular in Argentina. Personally, I am rooting for Tigre. They were only recently promoted after a twenty some odd year absence from the Primera, so I think it would make a great story.