In the first half Málaga FC was under par. During the first minutes both teams limited their strengths through an exchange of approaches without excessive risk. Little by little, Pellegrini’s team began taking the pulse of the game; including in the twentieth minute, when the referee annulled a legal Van Nistlerooy goal for a possible offside after Demichelis’ header from a corner.
The ball’s mobility which Málaga created was only slowed down by the Portuguese side; in an ugly tackle by Postiga on Joaquín, it was followed by a chilling fault by Onyewu on Toulalan. Control of the game began to be tinted by the colour of the blues and whites. Then, a good cross from the left by Eliseu allowed Baptista, who came in alone, to open the scoring, one nil, in the 37th minute. Málaga got comfortable. A great move started by Apoño, which got a deep pass to the right wing, enabled Jesús Gámez to offer an excellent centre for Van Nistelrooy, who after controlling the ball, crossed the ball towards Rui Patricio’s goal.
The Lisbon side looked more in-tune in the first few minutes of the second half, and took a risk by firing into Willy Caballero’s goal; the Portuguese even claimed a possible Demichilis penalty on Ri-nau-do. In fact in the 15th minute in the second half, the recently brought on Diego Rubio took advantage of a good pass between the lines to close the gap and bring some excitement to the game with the first goal for Sporting.
But this Málaga squad has a lot of fire in its belly, as it once again demonstrated. An excellent combination between the recently brought on Rondón and Baptista allowed the Brazilian to score the second and put the team on track to move forward into the final stages of the Carraznza Trophy.
At the end, in some of the closing moments, Málaga committed the sin of over confidence, but brought it back and took advantage of their superiority gained in the first half to crucify the ever more squeezed Sporting. With this triumph, Pellegrini’s men will play tomorrow at 10 p.m in the grand finale of the Carranza Trophy against the host, Cádiz.
