Estudiantes opened the first leg of its Copa Libertadores semifinal against Flamengo at UNO in La Plata at 21.30, with Juan Gabriel Benítez of Paraguay in charge and Alexander Medina forced to shape his team without Marcos Rojo. The match carried more than the weight of a semifinal; it marked Estudiantes' return to this stage after 17 years, and it did so with both sides walking in short of full strength.
For Medina, the puzzle began in the back line. Rojo was ruled out by Conmebol, while Leandro González Pirez and Tomás Palacios were also unavailable, leaving Estudiantes to rearrange a defense for one of the biggest nights in the club's recent continental history. Tiago Palacios was available, and Joaquín Correa remained one of the doubts for the starting eleven, giving the coach a narrow set of options as the clock moved toward kickoff.
Flamengo arrived with a different kind of problem. Danilo and De Arrascaeta were injured, and Jorginho was suspended after his second yellow card against the Ecuadorians in the quarterfinal second leg. Even so, the Brazilian side still carried the kind of hierarchy that makes every defensive lapse expensive, and its attack offered enough alternatives that one starting spot was down to Gonzalo Plata or Saúl Ñíguez.
The contrast is what gives this tie its bite. Estudiantes reached the semifinal by eliminating Corinthians in San Pablo, with Alexis Castro scoring and Dephay missing a penalty in the final seconds, while Flamengo advanced past Independiente del Valle with a 3-1 aggregate and then came in on the back of a domestic win over Fluminense, sitting at the top of its league table. These are teams that know each other, too: in this Copa Libertadores, they had already met four times in the last two editions, and their most recent group-stage encounter at Jorge Luis Hirschi ended level in La Plata before Flamengo won by one goal in Río de Janeiro.
That history makes the selection call around Rojo the detail that matters most. Medina had to find another answer for a semifinal night that arrived after 17 years away from this stage, while Flamengo had to prove that absences would not dent the edge it brought into La Plata. What followed from that balance would say as much about the tie as the result itself.
