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This is Tigres' second consecutive CONCACAF Champions League final appearance. The team lost last year's title to America, but should perhaps be regarded as favorite to win this time around. A heavyweight squad has kept UANL reliably in the hunt for trophies for the last couple of seasons. In 2015, Tigres won the Liga MX Apertura, and made the final of the Copa Libertadores. In 2016, the team was in the CCL final and won the Apertura again. In 2017, it would surely like to get that CCL title that it missed out on last year.
Nominally at a disadvantage as the lower seed in this match-up, Tigres host the first leg and then must seek to clinch the title in Pachuca. But UANL has been the lower seed in every round of the CCL knockout stage this year, and has yet to stumble. It is also in impressive form: Tigres have won their last two home games by a combined score of 7-0. A win by three or four goals in the first leg of this series could put the CCL trophy out of Pachuca's reach.
Los Tuzos are not just here to fulfill the requirement that the CCL winner beat an opponent in the final. Pachuca is a good team in its own right, but it is coming into this game in dismal form: no wins and no goals in its last five Liga MX matches.
Pachuca needs a pick-me-up; Tigres is coming in hot: this looks like a mismatch on paper. But there is quality in both squads - and Los Tuzos have the current top-scorer in this year's CCL, Hirving Lozano, to call on.
Away goals are the first tie-breaker if the two legs end with aggregate scores level, so expect Pachuca to at least try to score a goal, and the likes of Lozano and Franco Jara are quite good at finding the net. Stopping Tigres' attacking juggernaut - Andre-Pierre Gignac, Javier Aquino, Jurgen Damm: to name just three players at the team's disposal - will be the more challenging task for Los Tuzos in the first leg.
Per livesoccertv.com, here's where to find the game:
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