Mexican Soccer: Tigres Advance in Playoffs Without Any Wins in Four Games

The premier Mexican professional soccer league, Liga MX, has finished the first half (the "Apertura") of its split 2014-15 regular season and the playoffs ("Liguilla") has already undergone two rounds with the initial eight teams whittled down to just two: América (based in Mexico City) and Tigres of UANL, one of the two Monterrey teams in the league.  América, the top-seeded team from the regualar season, has advanced in the playoffs the traditional way, mainly by winning.  This may sound like an obvious fact: how else would a team advance past its opponents?  Fancy you should ask that, for the Tigres represent an interesting case.

The UANL Tigres were seeded at #2, just behind América...so for the first two rounds, they were seeded higher than each of their opponents, Pachuca and Toluca.  This is crucial, because in the Liguilla, each round consists of two games between the same teams, with each game played at the other's stadium.  Whoever wins the aggregate goal total for the two games advances, which is pretty self-evident.  It gets a little strange, however, when the total is tied.  The first "tiebreaker" in such a case gives the team that scored the most "away" goals the series.  But if the total is still the same, then tiebreaker #2 kicks in: the higher-seeded team advances.  In the first round, each game saw Pachuca and Tigres drawing at 1-1, so Tigres advanced solely on the basis of their higher seeding.  In the next, semifinal round, Tigres played Toluca...and both games were scoreless.  Once again, Tigres advanced just because they were seeded higher.  And now, having played in these playoffs with ZERO victories to their credit so far in the first four games, Tigres has reached the finals!  But now they'd better get serious and score some goals, for they'll probably have to win at least one game to beat higher-seeded América.  Still, should both games end in draws and Tigres scores more "away" goals, they could conceivably win the Liguilla, and thus the Apertura championship, with not even one victory throughout the entire playoffs!