Brazil defeats Chile and qualifies for the Copa América semifinals

Brazil’s national soccer team advanced to the Copa América semifinals on Friday after beating Chile 1-0 in a long-suffering match in which they played almost the entire second half with one man less due to an expulsion .

In the semifinal, to be played on Monday at the Nilson Santos stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil will face Peru, which earlier eliminated Paraguay on penalties.

Lucas Paquetá scored the winning goal for Brazil in the 46th minute after entering the break from the substitutes bench, while two minutes later Gabriel Jesús received the red card for a brutal infraction on Eugenio Mena.

At the start of the match played in the city of Rio, Chile handled the ball with Arturo Vidal, Charles Aránguiz and Alexis Sánchez, kept their lines together on the field and pressed when they did not have the ball in their power to prevent Brazil from deploying of your game.

After the first minutes, the game was even in midfield and Brazil took danger in the 21st minute through a shot by Roberto Firmino from the second post, after a Neymar delivery from the left sector.

Chile responded five minutes later with a run between five rivals and a shot by Eduardo Vargas that goalkeeper Ederson deflected to the corner kick.

In the final stretch of the first half, the team led by Tité consolidated its improvement to get closer to the rival goal with shots from Danilo and Jesús that were stopped by goalkeeper Claudio Bravo.

In the restart, Brazil surprised their rival and opened the scoring in the 46th minute through Paquetá, after an associated play between Fred, Casemiro and Neymar.

Two minutes later, the “verdeamarela” team was left with ten players due to the expulsion of the Manchester City striker due to a “flying kick” on Mena.

Chile took advantage of the numerical superiority, dominated the game and created a series of opportunities through the Chilean nationalized Englishman Ben Brereton and Carlos Palacios that were covered by Ederson to sustain the triumph of the Brazilian team.

“We are sad about the result, we deserved much more. In these games you need a referee who has the pants, who is fair and does not want to be the clown of the game, but we were won by the number one candidate, the team that is playing as local,”Arturo Vidal told television after the elimination.

“We are leaving sad because he lost, but we left everything, we missed the goal, we failed to define. If there is a referee who does not allow us to play, for everything and the owner of the show is believed is very difficult,” he added.