Internacional find scoring touch to finish third
Reuters - Saturday 18 December 2010, 17:19
ABU DHABI - Brazil's Internacional found
their goal touch to beat 10-man Seongnam of South Korea 4-2 and
take third place at the Club World Cup on Saturday, but it was
scant consolation for their stunning failure to reach the final.
"The basic difference was that today we scored the goals,"
said Internacional coach Celso Roth, whose team are the first
from South America to miss out on the final after their 2-0
semi-final defeat to African champions TP Mazembe on Tuesday.
Forwards Tinga and Alecsandro scored before half an hour was
up and the Asian champions were reduced to 10 men in the 34th
minute when defender Jan Suk-won was sent off for a body-check
on Tinga, his second booking.
Tinga stooped to Alecsandro's low right cross to head
Internacional, winners of the tournament in 2006, into a
15th-minute lead.
The Libertadores Cup holders went further ahead when
Alecsandro took a square pass from Argentine playmaker Andres
D'Alessandro and shot inside the right-hand post.
Striker Dzenan Radoncic came closest for the South Korean
side in the first half but goalkeeper Renan managed to block his
shot and turn the ball away for a corner.
D'Alessandro made it three for the Brazilian side early in
the second half with a fine left-footed shot from outside the
box that curled away from keeper Jung Sung-ryong and went in off
his left-hand post.
Alecsandro his second and Internacional's fourth in the 71st
minute up before Colombian midfielder Mauricio Molina pulled two
back for Seongnam in the final six minutes.
"If we'd had the luck to score (on Tuesday) our situation
would have been different," Roth told the post-match news
conference.
"If we're not playing for the cup today it's because at some
moment we stepped over the limit," he said, agreeing that his
team got carried away by their tag as favourites to reach the
final with Inter Milan.
By beating the 2006 champions, Mazembe of DR Congo broke the
monopoly Europe and South America have had on the tournament
final.
That defeat was a bitter pill for Internacional as South
American teams take the tournament more seriously than their
European counterparts, regarding it as the pinnacle of club
football.