América, from the bottom of the table to overnight leaders
Tano Ortiz’s team didn’t have a good start to Apertura 2022 and at one point were bottom of the table. Now, they are leaders of the competition.
América have finally woken up from a nightmare - they are in the fortunate position of being leaders of the 2022 Apertura after enjoying a brilliant resurgence. Just a short while ago they were bottom of the table, now they are top of the pile.
At the start of the campaign, Tano Ortiz team’s experienced a number of problems that caused them to fall behind in the standings. One of them was losing Roger Martínez to injury in the opening game against Atlas - he remains sidelined recovering from a tendon issue.
As the weeks progressed, the Azulcremas began to respond out on the pitch. With the available squad, reinforcements arrived, such as Jonathan Rodríguez while trusty stars like Diego Valdés rediscovered their goal-scoring touch and the team began their ascent of the table.
Little by little, the Eagles took flight towards the play-off positions where they continued to produce good performances. In Week 7 they sprang back to life, beating Bravos de Juárez and since then they have gone six games without defeat. The last time they lost was to was León in Week 6.
In Week 11, they beat Mazatlán 1-3 away from home, a result that catapulted them directly to the top of the standings, but only provisionally - they have to wait to see how Monterrey and Toluca do in their games on Sunday.
New goal scorer
Another boost for América is that goals have been coming from other sources. After Santiago Giménez left for Feyenoord in the Netherlands, the team needed to find a new supplier of goals - they found it in Henry Martín, who has surpassed Bebote by scoring seven goals in total, with Nicolás Ibáñez, Martín Barragán and Mathías Hernández just behind him in the goals ranking.
Henry is fighting to be among the 26 players that Gerardo Martino will take to the World Cup. He is responding on the pitch with goals, hopefully to earn a place in the squad to be with Mexico in Qatar.