River Plate stunned Talleres 1-0 in the Argentina Copa Libertadores round of 16 that was staged on Thursday morning.
The drama only kicked off on the hour mark when Lucas Suárez was shown a straight red card for a bad challenge on Adam Bareiro from behind, seeing Talleres sink to 10 men with a half-hour to play.
Yet despite the numerical inferiority, the hosts appeared to take a shock lead from a set-piece, but the linesman’s flag came to River’s rescue. While it looked like the first-leg clash would fizzle out, Paulo Díaz stepped up to play hero and win it late for River dramatically, seeing the Argentine giants take a one-goal lead back to the Monumental.
In another match of the day, Botafogo earned a remarkable 2-1 victory over Palmeiras to take into the second-leg.
The scoring was kicked off by Luiz Henrique, who collected a pass from Igor Jesus before finishing to set the home crowd alight and stun Palmeiras. But the three-time winners responded well when summer-signing Maurício opened his account by somehow sending his shot past John Furtado, whose attempt to keep the shot out was a weak one.
Keeping up with the trend, Igor Jesus quickly put Botafogo back in front to bag his first goal for the club and potentially put concerns over the injury crisis up front to bed for now.
Peñarol marked their first round-of-16 game since 2011 with a 4-0 thrashing of The Strongest to take a commanding lead in the tie.
