Reported as possibly being one of the biggest upset in Polo history, the star-studded team of Valiente was unable to put off the uber-determined team of Grand Champions. The game was at 11-11 each at the end of the 6th chukker and hence the match proceeded into the extra chukker. With the crowd roused to their feet, the Argentine 10-goaler Juan Martin Nero playing for Grand Champions nailed the conclusive goal of the match. Grand Champions ended their Founder’s Cup campaign remaining undefeated at 4-0 in the eight-team, 26-goal tournament and took home the monumental $60,000 prize.
Valiente(Bob Jornayvaz, Agustin Nero, Santi Torres, Adolfo Cambiaso) led by the legendary Cambiaso went into the final expecting to register a win against Grand Champions (Juan Martin Nero, Rodrigo Andrade, Grant Ganzi and Juancito Bollini). Valiente, an overtime winner of the season-opening All-Star Challenge Draw Tournament with Nero, Torres, Pablo MacDonough and Poroto Cambiaso, was the heavy favorite.
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Highly euphoric after the match, Nero joked around at the presser “I don’t know what happened — they say that we won”. The 10- Goaler was named as the most valuable player of the tournament.
Ganzi, 20, a junior at Lynn University, and Bollini, 22, a senior at Florida Atlantic University both made their professional debuts in a 26- Goal tournament format.
“This is a huge upset,” Ganzi said. “The last time Adolfo lost at this level other than last year’s U.S. Open final was a long time ago. It’s tough to beat these guys.”
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Valiente led by 3-0 due to handicap disparity at the opening whistle of the match and was successful in extending it to 5-0 in the initial parts of the very first chukker of the match. They seemed to be running away with the match, registering a 7-3 lead until Grand Champions were able to mount a comeback. Grand champions fired off 5 goals which remained unanswered in the 3rd and the 4t chukker and gained an 8-7 lead for the first time in the match, due to Nero and Ganzi’s superb offensive run. “We just had a determined mentality,” Ganzi said. “We never gave up.”
The game saw both the teams equalizing scores four times before MVP Nero’s save. Nero displayed a match-winning consistent performance, scoring the match-high 7 times, including 4 penalty conversion.
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Andrade scored four and Ganzi added one to the team’s 12 goal win. Cambiaso was relatively quieter in the encounter, scoring only twice while Torres led Valiente with five goals. Agustin Nero also scored once for his team.
