Internacional triumph in the Copa Sudamericana

Internacional de Porto Alegre won the Copa Sudamericana 2008 after a 1-1 draw last night against Estudiantes de La Plata, following the 1-0 victory in last week’s first leg in Buenos Aires.
 
Agustin Alayes (68) put Estudiantes ahead with a goal scored after receiving a pass from Leandro Benitez from a free-kick from the left, thus levelling the aggregate score. The match had to go into extra time and in the 113th minute Nilmar scored the goal that gave the cup to the Brazilians.
 
With this victory Internacional are the first Brazilian team to win this trophy and at the same time win the only cup that they did not have. In 2006 Inter won the Copa Libertadores and the Club World Cup, in 2007 they won the Recopa and this year the Copa Sudamericana.
 
The team of Porto Alegre started the match better than Estudiantes thanks to the performance of Andres D'Alessandro who owned the midfield and also appeared in the attack of his team.
 
Estudiantes were confused and couldn't manage to get possession of the ball while Mauro Boselli was alone in attack. On 30 minutes Boselli did score with a header, it was 1-0 for the Argentinians, but the goal was disallowed for offside.
 
The second half was similar to the first one, with the only difference being that D'Alessandro wasn't as centrally important for his team. That let Estudiantes have more time the ball.
 
Alayes scored on 68 minutes, Marcos Angeleri could have given the victory to his team but shot wide of the right post and the match went into extra time.
 
During the extra 30 minutes Estudiantes tired and tried to play for a penalty shootout, but Nilmar appeared on 113 minutes and scored. Before that keeper Mariano Andujar had stopped two shots but couldn't do anything about the third.

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