Uruguay

Chile outlast Uruguay to reach Copa America semifinals

Published Jun. 24, 2015 9:30 p.m. ET

Jonathan Wilson

SANTIAGO, Chile --

Finally, with 10 minutes remaining, Uruguay’s resistance was broken. Oscar Washington Tabarez’s side had produced a magnificent defensive performance, but it was fatally undermined with the sending-off of Edinson Cavani after 62 minutes. Eventually, Chile’s pressure told. The ball was calmly worked in from the left flank. Mauricio Isla found himself in enough space to drive home a ferocious shot from just outside the box to secure a 1-0 victory. The roar was extraordinary, the noise of 45,000 fans beginning to believe that a 99-year wait for a first Copa America may be coming to an end.

Uruguay played with such discipline until Cavani received a red card for his response to Gonzalo Jara's unseemly provocation. Once Isla scored, they disgraced themselves. Three players barged a linesman after he’d flagged for a foul on Alexis Sanchez. A brawl then broke out between the players that dragged on for a couple of minutes. It ended only with the Brazilian referee Sandro Ricci’s decision to send Tabarez from the bench. Jorge Fucile collected a second yellow card for the foul, but, remarkably, no other player was punished.

But the unsavoury end should not be allowed to disguise the quality of the first three-quarters of this game, or how well Chile did to overcome a nation that has made a habit of eliminating the hosts. This was an exceptional display from Jorge Sampaoli’s team, not just for its passing or the way it attacked in great waves, but for the mental strength it showed to keep going and not succumb to Uruguay temptation.

Although the game began with Uruguay pressing into the Chilean half, it rapidly settled into the predicted pattern. Chile dominated possession, pushing high up as Uruguay formed two mighty blue banks of four before them. It was high-paced, engaging, occasionally brutal football, a superb encounter between two sides with very different ways of playing, as mesmerising as watching waves crash against the sea-wall.

For Chile, Valdivia was majestic. At his best, the Palmeiras playmaker can be a wonderfully subtle and incisive player, an old-fashioned sort of number 10, who floats around the pitch, appearing in the least expected places to try to fashion through-balls. One turn and nutmeg early on left Fucile on his backside. Fucile, in the side at left-back because of the injury to Martin Caceres and the suspension of Alvaro Pereira, has played only 142 minutes of football this year since returning after an operation on his thigh. He seemed the one potential weak link that a Chile side that tends to attack down its right anyway, and there were a handful of dangerous crosses whipped in form that flank. For the most part, though, for all its intelligent probing, Chile was restricted to speculative efforts from long range.

On the all of his house in Montevideo, Tabarez has printed a slogan attributed to Che Guevara: “You must always toughen yourself without losing your tenderness.” It’s a line that -- when it keeps its aggression in check -- encapsulates the philosophy of his Uruguay side. They are vigorous in the tackle, a hard, uncompromising side unafraid of the physical side of the game, bristling with the “garra” -- literally “claw” although the term has come to refer to the combination of grittiness and streetwiseness Uruguayans see as characteristic of their style of play.

Egidio Arevalo Rios is the unsung heart of this Uruguay side, a squat bundle of muscle forever gobbling up the ball in front of the back four: to watch him play is to understand instantly why a ball-winning midfielder is frequently referred to in South America as a Pac-man.

So concerned was Chile by Uruguay’s height advantage and the threat it posed from set-plays that in training Sampaoli had his side practising winning headers above a tape stretched seven feet above the ground. By and large it worked, with the goalkeeper Claudio Bravo clearly under instructions to come to punch crosses away if he possibly could. Set plays, though, remained Uruguay’s most likely avenue: Bravo flapped at an early long throw before recovering to block from Christian Rodriguez, and then, just before the hour, Diego Rolan could only get a tame prod on a dropping ball after a Carlos Sanchez free-kick fell in front of him in the box.

But it was Cavani -- already under scrutiny after his father's DUI arrest earlier this week -- who became the key figure. He again looked sluggish at centre-forward, but he did make a handful of key defensive headers before frustration got the better of him. Having been booked for a foul on Arturo Vidal in the first half, Cavani was sent off 18 minutes into the second when, having refused to retreat at a free-kick, he flicked out in retaliation at Jara. It was stupid rather than vicious, but it meant his side had to play the final half hour under even more of a state of siege than would otherwise have been the case.

Uruguay is resilient, bit not that resilient, and Chile’s movement did for it in the end. The host goes on to play either Bolivia or Peru in the semi-final. The long drought is two games from ending.