The Polo Report
By Steve Crowder
April 12th, 2011
The Semis start today in Florida. I was just reading Polo Line on the net and picked up some very interesting facts or at least I think they are if they are right. Of the 4 teams in the finals, 2 of them have two of the leading scorers in the tournament … Lechuza and Los Monjitas. They play each other doe. This means they have only one person to shoot at goal or what does it mean? Well I saw Lechuza play and they have 3 potential scorers as Victor is quite good at going to goal, but according to the numbers on PL, Lechuza scored 28 goals and Sapo scored 28. This must not include Quarters as he also scored 10 in that I believe and he is in the semis. Also his brother in-law Agustin Merlos also is one of the top 4 with 23 of 34 goals scored by Los Monjitas. In this case at least some goals were scored by teammates. These two teams play each other on Thursday, so it should be interesting. What if they take each other and both have a pair of 10’s with them? I am not sure this is for all games because Camilo scored the winning goal in one game, but none the less the point is I think it will take a team effort on the field and on the scoreboard to win the Open. I think the winner of tomorrows game will win it between Audi and Valiente and they have the 5th and 6th high scorers. Gonzalo Pieres has only 18, but maybe 18 assist as well of the 42 Audi goals scored and a few penalties to go with it. Nacho Astrada has 20 of 37 and I am sure several were penalty shots as he is very accurate at this. This comes down to team play and this is where I find the winners as a rule. Adolfo is an exception. He uses the team, but is so good at goal he often is the high scorer of any game, but he also is very clever to feed the ball to the hot hand if he is not. Adolfo Cambiaso was tied as top scorer with Sapo at 28 and his team was leading in the scoring by 3 at 45 over Audi, but did not make it to the semis. The 3rd place man Facundo, who also had 24 of 31 goals did not make it to the finals. This is my opinion that a team like Audi, if they have the horses and this is well over 60% of the game, will be hard to beat. However, if they foul Nacho will make them pay.
Today’s game will be good. As I see it you have two very tough guys on each team with the man Nero and Espain. They do take anyone and are excellent team players. Obviously Sapo shoots well at goal and Los Monjitas has a very tough E. Astrada, who maybe the best # 2 in good polo. And a very tough Santi Toc who has a very solid game across the board. I am not sure about the horses, but I think EA may stop Sapo if he can get there. We shall see as after today there will only be one spot left for the big show.
See ya.