Johan Venegas scored a pair of goals to lead Costa Rican side Deportivo Saprissa, the side of T&T defender Aubrey David, to a 2-0 victory over CD Marathon of Honduras in the Scotiabank Concacaf League (SCL) quarterfinals on Tuesday night at the Estadio Nacional in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
With the win, Saprissa has qualified for its ninth Scotiabank Concacaf Champions League, while Marathon will look to make the most of their second opportunity in next week’s play-in match
Venegas now leads all players with six goals in the 2020 SCL and increased his lead atop the all-time SCL scoring chart with an astounding 13 goals in just 11 matches.
After scoring all four of Saprissa’s goals in their 4-1 win over Municipal of Guatemala in the Round-of-16, Venegas picked up where he left off by handing last year's SCL champions a 1-0 lead in the 13th minute when he headed in Marvin Angulo’s corner kick.
Marathon looked to respond and Allan Banegas fired a shot goal-ward in the 32nd that forced Saprissa GK Aaron Cruz into a fingertip save.
With every minute that passed, the tension increased with both sides vying for every single ball and Marathon still on the hunt for an equaliser. Mathias Techera nearly evened things up for the Honduran hosts in the 52nd, only to see his header bounce off the crossbar.
Marathon would rue the mistake, as three minutes later in the 55th on a Michael Barrantes-led counterattack for Saprissa, Venegas headed in his second goal of the night to extend the lead to 2-0.
From there, the Saprissa defence took over and nailed down the victory to take another step toward successfully defending its SCL title.