Coming in to the 2011 Copa America, Uruguay vs. Chile looked like the glamour match of the group stages. Alexis Sanchez, Edinson Cavani, and Luiz Suarez are among the most exciting young forwards in the world. Diego Forlan was the Golden Ball winner at the last World Cup, while Humberto Suazo led CONMEBOL World Cup qualification in goals. Both teams played extremely entertaining football at that World Cup. So surely, both teams set the stage for the game with impressive opening performances, right?
Wrong. Chile defeated Brazil, but they left it late. Sanchez and Suazo were not poor, but they didn't look like themselves either. Using similar language to describe the performance of Uruguay would be extremely generous, as they looked very, very far from their best. Suarez scored a goal to rescue a point, but Cavani was extremely poor. They looked nothing like the Uruguay team that entertained the world en route to a World Cup semifinal appearance last summer.
It would be unfair to assume that Uruguay and Chile will not up their games on Friday because Argentina and Brazil haven't looked very good in their matches, but due to the way the tournament has started, it's just easy to feel like the teams are going to disappoint in the build-up to this game.
There's no doubt that both Chile and Uruguay have the talent to challenge any team in the world and to treat fans to an entertaining match. Let's just hope that they're actually up to the task, unlike their opening games.
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