Dig­i­cel Pro League club, Blink/Cli­co San Juan Jabloteh will need a win by two clear goals away to Mex­i­co's San­tos La­gu­na at the Nue­vo Es­ta­dio Coro­na on Wednes­day night to ad­vance to the Group Stages of the 2010/2011 Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons League. This af­ter the four-time T&T cham­pi­ons and 2003 Caribbean Foot­ball Union Club Cham­pi­onship win­ner, suf­fered a nar­row 1-0 loss in its first-leg en­counter at the Mar­vin Lee Sta­di­um, Ma­coya on Tues­day night. Speak­ing af­ter the match Jabloteh's Eng­lish coach, Ter­ry Fen­wick was full of praise for his squad de­spite the loss while he ad­mit­ted the sec­ond-leg will be an up­hill bat­tle. "It's go­ing to be a tall or­der for us," said Fen­wick. There is a huge dif­fer­ence in us play­ing at home and they play­ing at their sta­di­um.

"But we cane take some pos­i­tives go­ing there be­cause I thing we showed a lot of guts es­pe­cial­ly in the first-half against a top qual­i­ty club. "I thought we lacked some self be­lief though in front of goal. It's been our down­fall for most of the do­mes­tic as we have not been able to score much goals. But in say­ing that, its on­ly a one goal dis­ad­van­tage and we will just have to go there with a good tac­ti­cal plan to try and get the re­sult we want," end­ed Fen­wick. The lone goal of the con­test came sev­en min­utes from full-time when Ro­dri­go Ruiz ran on­to a slow­ly rolled ball in­side the six-yard box from Oribe Per­al­ta near to the by-line. Ruiz and Per­al­ta were two of three sub­sti­tutes from San­tos 4-1 vic­to­ry over At­lante in the open­ing round of the Mex­i­can Aper­tu­ra on the week­end used against Jabloteh by its Ar­gen­tine man­ag­er, Ruben Omar Ro­mano. Ro­mano em­ployed an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent start­ing 11 from the line­up against At­lante, but San­tos still had the bet­ter of play for the first ten min­utes, in­clud­ing a Juan Pablo San­ti­a­go's head­er from Ruiz's cross at the edge of the six-yard box that cleared the bar.

De­spite be­ing out­played for much of the half, San­tos had one more clear chance in the first 45 min­utes when Jaime Tole­do split the cen­ter­backs with a pass for Per­al­ta, who took one touch at the arc in­to the area be­fore pulling a right-foot­ed shot wide of the left post in the 38th. Jabloteh, which had not played a match since Ju­ly 9 due to the Pro League's mid-sea­son break and were with­out the sus­pend­ed duo of Eli­jah Man­ners and Cyra­no Glen, fi­nal­ly test­ed Miguel Bercer­ra in the 58th minute when cap­tain Mar­vin Oliv­er hit a shot from the top of the 18-yard box that de­flect­ed on its way in, forc­ing the San­tos cus­to­di­an to dive low to his right post to smoth­er the ball. Sec­ond-half in­tro­duc­tion, na­tion­al mid­field­er, At­u­al­la Guer­ra who re­placed Kennedy Hink­son in the 62nd minute had a pair of chances with­in a minute from in­side the area with just un­der 15 min­utes re­main­ing, but he fired one too close to Bercer­ra and put the oth­er well wide of the far post.

How­ev­er, with sev­en min­utes left in the matcch, Per­al­ta found some space in­side left side of the Jabloteh penal­ty-area and cen­tred for Chilean, Ruiz to tap home in­to an open net with goalkepeer Cleon John out of po­si­tion for a de­served 1-0 lead. Three min­utes lat­er it was near­ly 2-0 San­tos' as Fran­cis­co Tor­res had a free shot on goal from the edge of the area, but the Jabloteh goal­keep­er was equal to the task. The San Juan club failed to mount any se­ri­ous late at­tacks as San­tos held out for the nar­row win ahead of next Wednes­day's re­turn leg. The win­ner of the Jabloteh/San­tos se­ries will ad­vance to Group B with the Colum­bus Crew, Mu­nic­i­pal and the Bru­jas-Joe Pub­lic win­ner. Last night Joe Pub­lic was away to Bru­jas and will host its sec­ond match at Ma­coya on Tues­day from 8 pm.

Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons League Re­sults

Tues­day:

Pre­lim­i­nary round first-Leg:

n San­tos 1 (Ro­dri­go Ruiz 83rd) vs Jabloteh 0

Jabloteh: 22 Cleon John, 12 Robert Primus, 6 Noel Williams, 29 S hel­don Bateau, 27 Leslie Rus­sell (4 Kar­lon Mur­ray 62nd)), 28 Ja­mal Jack, 10 Mar­vin Oliv­er, 17 Kennedy Hink­son (11.Ataullah Guer­ra 59th), 9 Ronal­do Viana, 13 Ja­son Mar­cano, 19 Hec­tor Sam (20 Willis Plaza 64th).

Coach: Ter­ry Fen­wick (Eng­land).

San­tos La­gu­na: 25 Miguel Be­cer­ra, 21 Juan San­ti­a­go, 19 Rafael Figueroa, 27 Jose Olvera (Yel­low 42) (8 Car­los Morales 69th), 14 Uriel �lvarez, 13 Jos� Reyes (Yel­low 40) (7 Jos� C�rde­nas 64th), 26 Fran­cis­co Tor­res, 15 Jaime Tole­do, 9 Ro­dri­go Ruiz (Yel­low 18), 17 Rodol­fo Sali­nas (4 Jorge Estra­da 72nd), 24 Oribe Per­al­ta.

Coach: Ruben Ro­mano (Ar­genti­na)

Oth­er Re­sults

Toron­to 1 (Chad Bar­rett 20th) vs CD Mo­tagua 0

Cruz Azul 3 (Em­manuel Vil­la 3rd, 55th, 72nd) vs San Fran­cis­co 2 (Ed­uar­do Jimenez 20th, Gabriel Tor­res 44th)

Is­landers 4 (David Fo­ley 26th, Nicholas Ad­dlery 45th, 81st, Josh Hansen 56th) vs LA Galaxy 1 (Ed­son Bud­dle 83rd)